Books written by Stephen King Hall

The main thing readers might find frightful about Stephen King's Under The Dome is its length. The second is the detailed map of the town and list of characters at the front of the book (including "Dogs of Note"), which sometimes foreshadows, you know, heavy lifting. Do not believe it. Breathless pacing and passive characterization are the symbols of writer's best books, and here the writing is immersive, the suspense unrelenting. You will turn page after page so fast, that your hand will hardly be able to keep up.
When the little town of Chester's Mill, Maine, is surrounded by an unknown force field that no one is able to see, the people inside must struggle for their lives. The situation worsens quickly due to the ecological effects of the dome and the machinations of Big Jim Rennie, who is an indecently hypocritical local politician and drug lord who likes the idea of having an isolated people to dominate and manipulate. Rennie also wants to keep hidden his lucrative sideline in the manufacture of crystal meth. Citizens start to panic, because the government's efforts to puncture the dome are useless. But there are few people trying to oppose him. They are footloose Iraq veteran Dale Barbie Barbara, newspaper editor Julia Shumway, a gaggle of teen skateboarders and others who want to solve the mistery of the dome. King fills the book with lots of characters masterfully but mercilessly, forcing them to live (or not) with the consequences of fast taken decisions. The list of characters looks like this:
Dale Barbara
Barbie, a drifter, ex-army, lives with a huge feeling of guilt from the time he was in Iraq. He works as a short-order cook at Sweetbriar Rose, and that is the closest thing he's ever had to a family life. When his old commander, Colonel Cox, calls from outside, Barbie's burden becomes the town itself.

Julia Shumway
Very pretty editor and publisher of the local town newspaper, The Chester's Mill Democrat, Julia is self-assured and Republican to the core, but she is drawn to Barbie and discovers, when it matters most, that her most vulnerable moment might be her most liberating.

Jim Rennie, Sr.
"Big Jim", who is a car dealer with a fierce smile and no kindness, he'd given his heart to Jesus at the age of sixteen and had little left for his customers, his neighbors, or his dying wife and deteriorating son. The town's Second Selectman, he's used to having things his way.
Joseph McClatchey
Scarecrow Joe, a 13-year-old also known as "King of the Geeks" and "Skeletor", a bona fide brain whose backpack bears the legend "fight the powers that be." He is cleverer than anyone, and proves it in a crisis.
Stephen King succeeded to fascinate readers with his new book. Although, there is only one supernatural thing the Dome itself, and everything else is pretty ordinary. But that doesn't make the novel boring or usual. Read the book, and you will definitely enjoy it.

"I would ask you a favour," said the German captain, as we sat in the cabin of a U-boat which had just been added to the long line of bedraggled captives which stretched themselves for a mile or more in Harwich Harbour, in November, 1918. I made no reply; I had just granted him a favour by allowing him to leave the upper deck of the submarine, in order that he might await the motor launch in some sort of privacy; why should he ask for more? Undeterred by my silence, he continued: "I have a great friend, Lieutenant-zu-See Von Schenk, who brought U.122 over last week; he has lost a diary, quite private, he left it in error; can he have it?" I deliberated, felt a certain pity, then remembered the Belgian Prince and other things, and so, looking the German in the face, I said: "I can do nothing." "Please." I shook my head, then, to my astonishment, the German placed his head in his hands and wept, his massive frame (for he was a very big man) shook in irregular spasms; it was a most extraordinary spectacle. It seemed to me absurd that a man who had suffered, without visible emotion, the monstrous humiliation of handing over his command intact, should break down over a trivial incident concerning a diary, and not even his own diary, and yet there was this man crying openly before me. It rather impressed me, and I felt a curious shyness at being present, as if I had stumbled accidentally into some private recess of his mind. I closed the cabin door, for I heard the voices of my crew approaching. He wept for some time, perhaps ten minutes, and I wished very much to know of what he was thinking, but I couldn't imagine how it would be possible to find out. I think that my behaviour in connection with his friend's diary added the last necessary drop of water to the floods of emotion which he had striven, and striven successfully, to hold in check during the agony of handing over the boat, and now the dam had crumbled and broken away. It struck me that, down in the brilliantly-lit, stuffy little cabin, the result of the war was epitomized. On the table were some instruments I had forbidden him to remove, but which my first lieutenant had discovered in the engineer officer's bag. On the settee lay a cheap, imitation leather suit-case, containing his spare clothes and a few books. At the table sat Germany in defeat, weeping, but not the tears of repentance, rather the tears of bitter regret for humiliations undergone and ambitions unrealized. We did not speak again, for I heard the launch come alongside, and, as she bumped against the U-boat, the noise echoed through the hull into the cabin, and aroused him from his sorrows. He wiped his eyes, and, with an attempt at his former hardiness, he followed me on deck and boarded the motor launch. Next day I visited U.122, and these papers are presented to the public, with such additional remarks as seemed desirable; for some curious reason the author seems to have omitted nearly all dates. This may have been due to the fear that the book, if captured, would be of great value to the British Intelligence Department if the entries were dated. The papers are in the form of two volumes in black leather binding, with a long letter inside the cover of the second volume. Internal evidence has permitted me to add the dates as regards the years. My thanks are due to K. for assistance in translation. ETIENNE.