Carrie

Carrie is the debut horror novel by the American author Stephen King, released in 1974. It is set in the town of Chamberlain, Maine, and revolves around Carrie White, a high school girl with telekinetic powers who takes revenge after a prank on prom night.

King wrote the book intending it as a short story for the men's magazine Cavalier, on a friend's suggestion that he write about a female character. He gave up on it at one point out of discomfort and apathy and did not expect it to succeed; his wife Tabitha persuaded him to continue and rescued the first three pages from the bin. The novel's structure is epistolary in part, with extracts from books, letters and testimony interspersed with the narrative. Carrie is raised by a mother whose religion leaves no room for her, and school offers the alternative she is never able to take, which is why the prom is the one occasion on which she can be both seen and hurt at once.

King followed it with a long career in horror, and Carrie remains the book that began it.