Shane, a mysterious gunfighter working on the Starrett family’s Wyoming homestead, straps on his gun one last time to stop the cattle baron Luke Fletcher and his hired gunman Stark Wilson.

Andy Dufresne, a banker wrongly convicted of murdering his wife, escapes from Shawshank Prison through a tunnel he dug for twenty-seven years behind a poster.

Gordie Lachance and his friends Chris, Teddy and Vern find the body of Ray Brower, a boy hit by a train, and Gordie and Chris stand up to Ace Merrill’s gang with a gun to keep them from taking credit.

Billy Halleck, a lawyer cursed to lose weight without stopping after he killed an old Romani woman in a car accident and escaped punishment, gets the curse transferred into a strawberry pie, meant for his wife Heidi, whom he blames.

Charlie McGee, an eight-year-old girl with the power to start fires with her mind, escapes the secret government agency known as the Shop after her father Andy is killed.

Scientists at the secret Wildfire lab race to understand a deadly microorganism from space that killed nearly everyone in Piedmont, Arizona.

Johnny Smith, who woke from a five-year coma with psychic visions, foresees that politician Greg Stillson will become president and start a nuclear war.

Reading historical fiction can make the past memorable, build empathy for people in other eras and encourage curiosity, though research also warns that readers can absorb errors from fiction.

Retired detective Bill Hodges stops Brady Hartsfield, the “Mercedes Killer” who drove a car into a crowd of job-seekers, from bombing a boy-band concert.

Astronaut Mark Watney, stranded alone on Mars after his crew thought he was dead, survives by growing potatoes and hacking equipment.