Misery [suggested by Wendy Gibson]

Misery Chastain is dead. Paul Sheldon has just killed her – with relief, with joy. Misery has made him rich; she was the heroine of a string of bestsellers. And now he wants to get on to some real writing.

That’s when the car accident happens, and he wakes up in pain in a strange bed. But it isn’t hospital. Annie Wilkes has pulled him from the wreck, brought him to her remote mountain home, splinted and set his mangled legs.

The good news is that Annie was a nurse and has pain-killing drugs. The bad news is that she has long been Paul’s Number One Fan. And when she finds out what Paul had done to Misery, she doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like it at all.

Paul Sheldon used to write for a living. Now he’s writing to stay alive. [product description from Amazon]

The novel has an entry on the author’s website, and a Wikipedia page. It was made into a film in 1990 starring James Caan and Kathy Bates.

Author’s Wikipedia page.
Author’s website.

Shortlisted for this month

The book selector for the month can choose up to three books for nomination. This month Wendy’s selections, on the laudable theme of “books I fancied reading”, were:

Sharp Objects

When two girls are abducted and killed in Missouri, journalist Camille Preaker is sent back to her home town to report on the crimes.

Long-haunted by a childhood tragedy and estranged from her mother for years, Camille suddenly finds herself installed once again in her family’s mansion, reacquainting herself with her distant mother and the half-sister she barely knows – a precocious 13-year-old who holds a disquieting grip on the town.

As Camille works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, she finds herself identifying with the young victims – a bit too strongly. Clues keep leading to dead ends, forcing Camille to unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past to get at the story. Dogged by her own demons, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming. [product description from Amazon]

The novel has its own Wikipedia page. Author’s Wikipedia page.
Author’s website.

A Man Called Ove

At first sight, Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots – neighbours who can’t reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d’etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents’ Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets.

But isn’t it rare, these days, to find such old-fashioned clarity of belief and deed? Such unswerving conviction about what the world should be, and a lifelong dedication to making it just so?

In the end, you will see, there is something about Ove that is quite irresistible… [Product description from Amazon]

The book has a Wikipedia page and was made into a Swedish language film (with English subtitles) in 2015, which also has its own Wikipedia page. There are rumours (and an IMDb stub entry) of an English language remake with Tom Hanks in the lead role.

Author’s Wikipedia page.
Author’s website.