Mattie was the doomed heroine, and Rogette the evil daughter of the villain, in "Bag of Bones" (1998). An interesting feature of this book is that the narrator was a writer suffering from writer's block through much of the tale.
2. Jerome Wireman
Answer: Edgar Freemantle
These are the protagonist and major supporting character in "Duma Key" (2008). Edgar Freemantle was a contractor recovering from a catastrophic injury, and Wireman befrieneds him on a classic King-style horror adventure.
3. Leland Gaunt
Answer: Polly Chalmers
In "Needful Things" (1991), Gaunt was the eerie shopkeeper who fulfilled every customer's dearest desire; Polly was the arthritis-riddled girlfriend of the local lawman whose interest in Gaunt mounted as the story progressed. The shop, whose name is the book's title, spawned chaos in the small Maine town of Castle Rock, which was the setting of several of King's tales.
4. John Coffey
Answer: Paul Edgecombe
John Coffey and Paul Edgecombe were two of the major good guys in King's "The Green Mile" (1996), a tale of a wrongly-accused death row prisoner with magical healing powers and the guards who cared for him. The book was written in serial form and was originally released in six separate parts before being published in a single volume.
It was later made into a very successful motion picture starring Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan.
5. Tom Gordon
Answer: Trisha McFarland
These were the two main characters in the lovely book "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" (1999), a story of a young girl who got lost while on an afternoon hike on the Appalachian Trail. Trisha survived her ordeal of several days, helped in no small part by her admiration for the Red Sox player Tom Gordon and the transistor radio she had, on which she could listen to ball games.
6. Jake Epping
Answer: George Amberson
This match is kind of a twist, because the two names refer to a single person. In the book "11/22/63" (2011), Jake Epping was a high school teacher in the 21st century who time-traveled back to 1958, where he took the name George Amberson, established a life, and tried to prevent the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963.
Stephen King has said that he had the idea for this book as early as 1971, even before his first blockbuster, "Carrie", was written; but he thought it required both too much research and more literary prowess than he had at the start of his career. It wasn't until 2011 that the book was published. It was on the "Times"' bestseller list for 16 weeks.
7. Charlie McGee
Answer: John Rainbird
These are the young protagonist and one of the major bad guys in the book "Firestarter" (1980). The book centered around Charlie, a seven-year-old girl with the power of pyrokinesis-the ability to spontaneously start fires-and the nefarious efforts of government agents to capture, study, and likely kill her. King included an afterword to the book in which he discusses actual government programs in the US and Russia (USSR at the time) that explored the use of various psychic abilities like telepathy and pyrokinesis.
8. Lisey Landon
Answer: Zack McCool
"Lisey's Story" (2005) is the story of a young widow, Lisey Landon, whose deceased husband Scott had had a terrible childhood and escaped from it to some degree into a fantasy world, which he shared with her. "Zack McCool" was the villain of the piece, pressuring Lisey to turn over her late husband's work to a university, and becoming ever more threatening as the story unfolds. King said at one time that this was his favorite of his works.
9. Clayton Riddell
Answer: Tom McCourt
These two men are the protagonists in the novel "Cell" (2006), about the aftermath of a mysterious "pulse" that was sent through cell phones, killing or transforming into zombies everyone who was on a cell phone at the time it occurred. Clay, who was in Boston at the time of the pulse, needed to get home to Maine to see if his young son Johnny was okay. He met Tom right after the pulse, and they threw in their lots together, walking from Boston to northern Maine and trying to kill as many of the dangerous "phoners" as they can, including their leaders.
Notes on the book's jacket say that King does not own a cell phone...
10. Danny Torrance
Answer: Dick Halloran
Danny Torrance was the young son of Jack Torrance, the writer who gradually became homicidally insane in the famous book and subsequent movie, "The Shining" (1977). Dick Halloran was a hotel employee who had "the shining" (telepathic powers), as did Danny, and who helped Danny and his mom escape from the isolated hotel where Jack was trying to kill them.
This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor LadyCaitriona before going online.
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