Stephen King and Peter Straub’s ‘Other Worlds Than These’ Will Break Your Heart - Esquire

Bear with me, because there is some backstory to get through before we can talk about the book I am actually here to review. Back in 1984, Stephen King and Peter Straub collaborated on the fantasy novel The Talisman. Like all the best King stories, it follows a young boy: in this case Jack Sawyer, 12, whose mother, Lily, is dying. Jack learns that a magical object called the Talisman might save her – if he can find it in a parallel world known as the Territories. Straub and King followed this up in 2001 with Black House, in which an adult Jack investigates a series of child murders that turn out to have disturbing links to the Territories. The books are very different: one a coming-of-age cross-country quest, in which Jack flips back and forth between two versions of the US; the other a fantastical and horror-inflected murder mystery. Both are brilliant and enduring classics which will always have a place on my bookshelves – I reread both of them, all 1,800-odd pages, to prepare for Other Worlds Than These and was as swept away and delighted as the first time round.

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Credit: Far Out / YouTube Still / Colleen Sturtevant Sat 17 October 2026 19:45, UK Since he’s always wanted to have a career like Ron Howard, it’s almost fitting that Jason Bateman worked with an actor neither of them could stand, and at around the same time, too. As a child actor who eventually segued into more adult roles, admittedly after a decade in the wilderness, before diversifying into directing, it makes perfect sense that Bateman views Howard as the blueprint, since few have managed to navigate that transition as successfully as the Happy Days veteran. If anything, it must have felt like kismet when they became collaborators on Arrested Development, allowing the star to tell the narrator and executive producer to his face that he’d spent his professional life dreaming of emulating his path from an on-camera nipper to a behind-the-camera force. One of the key lessons he took from Howard, as obvious as it sounds, was not to be a dick. Bateman had his demons, and he battled them successfully, but it was watching the two-time Academy Award winner’s kind, compassionate demeanour that convinced him if he ever made it back to the big time, he’d try to be a nice guy.