39. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
A young girl is lost in the woods, but luckily she is armed with the only forms of entertainment allowed in Maine: a radio and The Boston Red Sox.
38. Black House
Once again teaming up with Peter Straub, King gives us a sequel to The Talisman that sees an adult Jack Sawyer, now a retired LA cop, living in Wisconsin with no memory of his boyhood supernatural exploits. After a string of bizarre murders pulls him back into action, however, Jack realizes that regaining his memories is the key to catching the sinister, otherworldly entity responsible for the bloodshed. It is a powerful, haunting reminder that once you’ve lived in Maine, a darkness will follow you wherever you go.
37. From a Buick 8
Some cops talk about a car they found 20 years ago that they believe to be a weird car. Passing the time by talking about something not even that interesting that happened decades ago is one of Maine’s official state pastimes, right up there with getting bitten by ticks and always looking like you’re about to hit someone but never quite doing it.
36. The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
Not the best of the Dark Tower series, but it involved a small rural community where children are robbed of their inner light and spend the rest of their lives as dull laborers, destined to grow to enormous size and die young. Sounds a lot like the worst state I’ve ever lived in.
35. The Colorado Kid
It’s a mystery novel where every answer only leads to more questions, and in the end the twist is that the mystery is never solved. While this can be irksome to fans of the genre, the unresolved death does serve as an apt warning of how outsiders usually fare in the pine tree state.
34. Cell
This post-apocalyptic tale about a signal carried through cell phones that turns people into rage monsters is scary, but it’s not Maine scary for one simple reason: Everyone’s cell phone works. Also, Maine already has a sound that would drive most people insane, and they call it an accent.
33. 11/22/63
This book involves time travel, which is definitely evocative of living in Maine. Something about all the snow slows their exposure to culture by a few decades, so it’s sort of like 1989 there. The only difference between the state and this book is that in the book the main character can stop the Kennedy assassination, and in Maine, you can’t do anything exciting or of any significance ever.
32. Joyland
This book is about a man trying to solve a murder case perpetrated by an assailant the papers call the “Carny killer.” Maine is where carny killers go to retire.
31. Doctor Sleep
While this sequel to “The Shining” is one of King’s stronger recent works, it ranks low on our list because of its implausibility. In it, an adult Danny returns to the place of his childhood trauma, the site where The Overlook hotel once stood. It is a fact that no one fortunate enough to leave Maine has ever returned.
30. Mr. Mercedes
This book centers around the hunt for a psychopath who drove a Mercedes into a crowd of people at a job fair, killing and injuring over a dozen people. It’s a despicable act, but after a year of living in Maine, it wouldn’t seem like one. After steeping in the cold, boredom, and isolation of the Pine Tree State, the idea of driving a car into a crowd of people no longer feels good or bad, it is simply as well an idea as any.
29. Revival
This Lovecraft-inspired tale posits that there is no heaven, and all of the afterlife may just be a hellscape of barely conceivable monsters. It’s the same feeling a visitor to Maine has after their third gas station whoopie pie.
28. Finders Keepers
This concept is actually 9/10s of the law in Maine.
27. End of Watch
This book centers around a killer who somehow drives his victims to suicide. We’re not sure exactly what he says to make them do this, but a great opening line would be “You’re in Maine.”
26. The Outsider
If there’s one thing the fine people of Maine hate more than each other and themselves, it’s outsiders.