THE NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER. For readers new to The Dark Tower THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE is a st&-alone novel & a wonderful introduction to the series. It is a story within a story which features both the younger & older gunslinger Roland on his quest to find the Dark Tower. Fans of the existing seven books in the series will also delight in discovering what happened to Roland & his ka tet between the time they leave the Emerald City & arrive at the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis. This Russian Doll of a novel a story within a story within a story visits Mid-World's last gunslinger Roland Deschain & his ka-tet as a ferocious storm halts their progress along the Path of the Beam. (The novel can be placed between Dark Tower IV & Dark Tower V.) Roland tells a tale from his early days as a gunslinger in the guilt ridden year following his mother's death. Sent by his father to investigate evidence of a murderous shape shifter a 'skin man ' Roland takes charge of Bill Streeter a brave but terrified boy who is the sole surviving witness to the beast's most recent slaughter. Roland himself only a teenager calms the boy by reciting a story from the Magic Tales of the Eld that his mother used to read to him at bedtime ' The Wind through the Keyhole'. 'A person's never too old for stories ' he says to Bill. ' Man & boy girl & woman we live for them.' & stories like these they live for us. The back cover of the UK hardcover edition features some 8 000 faces of those who entered the Stephen King Faces competition. These faces are indiscernible to the naked eye on the actual covers but they can be found & identified with the zoom mechanism on http://www.stephenkingfaces.com/