11/22/63

By Stephen King ( Scribner’s/Simon & Schuster, 849 pages, $35.00). Movie rights to Jonathan Demme.
Deviating from his usual horror thrillers, King offers up a time travel story featuring an English teacher named Jake Epping, who travels from the present to 1958 to prevent President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and change the course of the 1960s. The classic King elements are all here — well-developed characters, a familiar plot made fresh, a fantastic climax. But there’s more here than the usual — a deep humanity to the characters, an element of romance and a thoroughly researched love of the period — that make this King’s best book in years.