Later

Later is a novel by the American writer Stephen King, published by Hard Case Crime on 2 March 2021. It was his third book for that imprint, after The Colorado Kid and Joyland, and it appeared in paperback with a limited hardcover edition.

Jamie Conklin grows up in New York City with his mother, Tia, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and he has an ability he cannot turn off. He sees the ghosts of the dead, and the ghosts have to answer truthfully anything he asks them, which gives a child access to information that adults would fight over. The book is narrated by Jamie, looking back, and it deals with the consequences of what he was asked to do with the gift before he was old enough to understand it. The novel entered the New York Times fiction bestseller list at number two, and it belongs with the author's crime fiction as much as his horror.

Because the narrator is a boy and the talent is the sort of thing that horror stories give children, the book works through what it costs a family to keep a secret of that kind and who decides how it gets used.