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Cover of Sleeping Beauties

Sleeping Beauties

960 pages

A dread-soaked, high-stakes thriller where a supernatural sleep phenomenon plunges a small Appalachian town into primal chaos.

What it feels like

Reading this book feels like watching a slow-motion apocalypse unfold in an isolated Appalachian town. The narrative is propulsive and dread-soaked, blending supernatural horror with gritty, high-stakes suspense. As a mysterious sleeping sickness claims the women and leaves the men to their most primal, violent devices, the atmosphere grows increasingly tense and claustrophobic. The prose grounds its occult and demonological elements in the stark reality of a women's prison and a desperate local sheriff fighting exhaustion. It is a dark, urgent exploration of societal collapse and gender dynamics that will grip readers who crave apocalyptic thrillers where the supernatural bleeds terrifyingly into the everyday.

Mood
  • dread-soaked
  • apocalyptic
  • tense
  • eerie
Tone
  • suspenseful
  • dark
  • urgent
  • gritty
Pace
propulsive
Themes
gender dynamics · societal collapse · primal violence · supernatural mystery · survival
The writing
Gritty and suspenseful, blending supernatural horror with grounded, small-town Appalachian realism.
The arc
Moves from creeping, eerie dread as a mysterious phenomenon takes hold, escalating into chaotic, primal violence and high-stakes survival.
Who it's for
Fans of high-stakes supernatural thrillers and apocalyptic horror who enjoy exploring societal collapse and gender dynamics.
Content notes
  • feral violence
  • pandemic or virus themes
  • prison setting
  • societal collapse

About the book

In this spectacular father/son collaboration, Stephen King and Owen King tell the highest of high-stakes stories: what might happen if women disappeared from the world of men?

All around the world, something is happening to women when they fall asleep; they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed, the women become feral and spectacularly violent...

In the small town of Dooling, West Virginia, the virus is spreading through a women's prison, affecting all the inmates except one. Soon, word spreads about the mysterious Evie, who seems able to sleep – and wake. Is she a medical anomaly or a demon to be slain?

The abandoned men, left to their increasingly primal devices, are fighting each other, while Dooling's Sheriff, Lila Norcross, is just fighting to stay awake.

And the sleeping women are about to open their eyes to a new world altogether... --front flap

Description from Open Library.

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