Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Talisman | 1984 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 2 | Black House | 2001 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 3 | Crna kuća | 2001 | Peter Straub | N/A |
The Talisman, published in 1984, was the first full collaboration between Stephen King and Peter Straub. The novel follows twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer as he travels across America and its parallel world, the Territories, searching for a magical object that can cure his mother’s cancer. The book draws on the classic quest structure while filling it with the specific textures of 1980s America: roadside motels, decaying industries, and the particular loneliness of a child trying to save a parent.
Black House, the 2001 sequel, finds Jack as an adult who has suppressed his memories of the Territories and become a retired homicide detective. A series of murders in a small Wisconsin town pulls him back into contact with both his past and with the wider mythology King was building in the Dark Tower series. The book has stronger connections to King’s other work than the first novel, and Dark Tower readers will recognize several familiar elements.
The third entry listed in the database, Crna kuca, is the Croatian translation of Black House rather than a separate installment. The series proper consists of the two English-language novels, with The Talisman standing as one of the defining fantasy novels of the 1980s and Black House offering a satisfying, if darker, continuation for readers who grew up with Jack Sawyer.