Gerald's Game

Gerald's Game is a 1992 suspense novel by American writer Stephen King. It is about a woman whose husband dies of a heart attack while she is handcuffed to a bed, and who begins to let the voices inside her head take over after realising she is trapped with little hope of rescue.

Jessie and Gerald travel from Portland to a secluded lake house in western Maine near Kashwakamak Lake. The game that gives the book its title involves handcuffing Jessie to the bedposts, an arrangement she pretends to enjoy and Gerald finds exciting; this time she asks him to stop and he pretends her protests are part of the game. She kicks him in the stomach and groin, the shock causes a fatal heart attack, and she is left cuffed to the bed with no expectation of being found for days.

The novel was dedicated to King's wife Tabitha and her five sisters. It was originally intended as a companion piece to his novel Dolores Claiborne, with the connecting idea of two women in crisis passing through the path of an eclipse, although that element was greatly reduced by the time the books were published. It was adapted into a film directed by Mike Flanagan in 2017.