Carrie

Carrie White is sixteen, painfully shy and the easy target of every girl at her small-town Maine school. At home, her mother's fierce religion leaves no room for comfort, and nobody notices that Carrie has a strange gift: she can move things with her mind. When a cruel prank in the locker room is followed by an unexpected invitation to the prom, the pressure that has built for years finds its outlet.

King tells the story in fragments, threading it with news reports, interviews and testimony gathered after the event, so dread settles in from the opening pages. His first novel is short, raw and furious, and it still lands hard half a century on. For anyone who has ever felt cast out, and anyone curious where King's long career began.