Folio’s Five-Star Volume For Pet Sematary Anniversary

A five-star volume, this spectacular piece of design will wow fans and bibliophiles alike.

Despite being adapted for cinema twice Pet Sematary’s power to chill has nothing to do with movie SFX. This is a book that utilises all of Stephen King’s skill to conjure up the uncanny, and the unnerving. The result is a true classic of the horror genre.

When Louis Creed moves his young family to their new house, it seems like an idyllic place for Ellie and Gage to grow up. Jud, their elderly neighbour, is kindly and wise, and there’s plenty of countryside for Churchill the cat to explore. It’s perfect, save for the busy main road that runs in front of the house…When the inevitable happens and Churchill meets his end, Jud shares a secret with Louis: beyond the Pet Sematary where children bury their animals there is a stranger, darker burial ground, one that holds power over life and death. Louis believes it is an act of kindness to bring back the beloved family pet, but it ends up being the first step on a path that leads to an unimaginable horror.

Originally published in 1983, the Folio Society’s new edition is a superb homage to the King of horror. Released to coincide with the book’s 40th anniversary, the volume is a spectacular piece of design that will wow fans and bibliophiles alike. Edward Kinsella continues his outstanding work on the Folio Stephen King collection, providing eleven illustrations that offer an enthralling glimpse of the human and inhuman horrors at the heart of the book. The hardback volume is completed with a cloth binding blocked with an image of Churchill the cat looming out of the dark, and eerie endpapers featuring a spiral of epitaphs taken from the Pet Sematary itself. Chapter headings are set in ‘Kingthings Typewriter’—the same font that made an appearance in Folio’s bestselling edition of The Shining.

The debate surrounding which of Stephen King’s books is the scariest has raged for years, but few could disagree that Pet Sematary is one of the strongest contenders. Horror master Guillermo de Toro is an avowed fan, commenting that the book “scared me when I was a young man. As a father, I now understand it better than I ever would have, and it scares me a hundred times more”. Stephen King himself hid the book away when it was finished, finding it “so startling, and so gruesome”that he was half afraid of it himself. Like Churchill the cat however, Pet Sematary was to get a second chance at life when King’s wife Tabitha convinced him it was too good to be hidden away.

Image from the Folio Society’s Pet Sematary by Edward Kinsella.

Uniquely terrifying and terrifically entertaining, Pet Sematary disinters the darkest of taboos. What if you could bring someone back from the dead? And what if it cost their soul – or yours? 

PRODUCTION DETAILS
Bound in blocked cloth.
Set in Miller with Kingthings Typewriter.
480 pages.
Black & white illustrated title page and 10 colour illustrations.
Printed endpapers.
Plain slipcase.
10” x 6¾”

The 40th Anniversary edition of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary is available from the Folio Society, priced £60. Visit https://www.foliosociety.com/uk/pet-sematary.html