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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780451192196
ISBN number: 0451192192
Label: Signet
Manufacturer: Signet
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 432
Printing Date: July 01, 1998
Publishing house: Signet
Sale Popularity Level: 293981
Studio: Signet
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
In a small Arizona town, a man counts his blessings: a loving wife, two teenage daughters, and a job that allows him to work at home. Then 'The Store' announces plansto open a local outlet, which will surely finish off the small downtown shops. His concerns grow when 'The Store's'builders ignore all the town's zoning laws during itsconstruction. Then dead animals are found on 'The Store's' grounds. Inside, customers are hounded by obnoxious sales people, and strange products appear on the shelves. Before long the town's remaining small shop owners disappear, and 'The Store' spreads its influence to the city council and the police force, taking over the town! It's up to one man to confront 'The Store's' mysterious owner and to save his community, his family, and his life!
* Bentley Little is the author of The Mailman, The Ignored,Dominion, and University
* Stephen King praised both University and The Ignored
* Bentley Little's books appeal to the same readership asNew York Times bestselling authors Stephen King,Peter Straub, and Dean Koontz
* Bentley Little is a recipient of the Horror Writers Association'sBram Stoker Award
* We have much more coming from Bentley Little
Amazon.com Review:
Bentley Little is a top craftsman of the horror tale in long form. He has the ability, more unusual than you might think, to imagine 300 to 400 pages' worth of horrific incidents that add up to a long-lasting and powerfully unsettling mood. In The Store Little examines the steadily expanding influence, under all of us, of chain stores. Listen to what one character says: 'A lot of these loonies ... are so worried about the federal government, and I never saw a government agency that worked worth a damn. These guys're so afraid of Big Brother and creeping totalitarianism, but our government's always seemed to me to be full of inept bunglers, not brilliant organized master planners. Hell, they couldn't even pull off a third-rate burglary. It's the corporations we have to worry about, I think. They're the ones with the money. They're the ones who can afford to hire the best and the brightest, to competently carry out their plans.'
The Store builds paranoia by starting with simple descriptions of the picturesque landscape and the deceptively banal Western town that is Juniper, Arizona. Then The Store arrives. The Store razes a lovely hill to build its huge parking lot. The Store offers well-paying jobs and an astonishing variety of consumer goods. The pattern of delight and worry in the citizens, as The Store spreads its tentacles into local concerns, is believable--disturbingly so. The Store seems like any other of the familiar chains that reproduce like rabbits, invade communities, wipe out small businesses, and turn unique localities into a generic America that looks just the same from Alaska to Florida.
But what exactly goes on, when Samantha and Shannon meet with their boss in the basement of The Store? And who are the Night Managers?
This is dystopia in microcosm. This is horror fiction at its subversive best. --Fiona Webster
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
I loved this book! It's a very "too close to the truth" for comfort tale. I'll never look at Walmart the same. lol
Rated by buyers -
"The Store" is the style of Bentley Little books I like: a typical family and town caught up in some sort of Being who makes things horrifying.
As in other of his books, Bentley Little doesn't hold back on the grey humor, his political views, sick stuff, gore.
Great read with a satisfying ending.
Rated by buyers 
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This is a very silly book. The concept is scary enough, but it is done with absolutely no subtlety whatsoever....It seems like the theme could be addressed better in metaphor. Visualizing some of the things in this book just make me laugh--like the bikini clad girls that bring Bill his food...Honestly, I feel like the crappy Resident Evil movies did a better job with representing The Umbrella Corporation's threats than this book did. It definitely seemed influenced by some of King's cheesier bits.
But, it's an entertaining enough read, if you are a quick reader. I read very fast and read it in one evening...however, if you are the type of person who takes a longer time to get through a book, I wouldn't recommend bothering with this. I don't think it would be a good use of your time.
I might try reading something else by this author, just to see, though. Like I said--silly, but entertaining.
Rated by buyers 
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I picked up this book after reading a positive review by Stephen King on one of the book clubs I do business with. What a mistake. I'm a big King fan, he's made me laugh, cry, frighten me to the point of almost soiling myself and invoked many more emotions. I had never read anything by Bentley Little and should have kept it that way. I kept wanting to through this book out, but I just thought it had to improve....it didn't.
I think he had a good idea with this book but didn't know how to tell it. Most of what happens in this book is just too farfetched for the mind to accept. It dosen't scare you or make you think. It just pisses you off.
Rated by buyers 
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In Little's THE STORE, a Walmart-like one-stop shopping destination powered by supernatural evil threatens a quiet small town in Arizona. (Later we find out that it's threatening much of the US as well.)
For someone who has worked (very briefly in both cases) at both Walmart & Target when I was younger, I found Little's lampooning of mega-marts often dead-on and hilarious. More than once I found myself laughing out loud while reading this. Think George Orwell mixed with Jonathan Swift, Dave Barry, Carl Hiaasen, and Stephen King with maybe a sprinkling of Kafka and you'll have a good idea of Little's style & story in THE STORE.
Though humorous, it is a very DARK humor, and the climax -- which I will not ruin by describing here -- is disturbing indeed (much moreso than your typical mindless slasher story murder/dismemberment.) This is thinking-man's horror, taboo-shattering but also funny and packing relevant social commentary.
This was my very first Bentley Little book but I doubt it will be my last.
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