10 Novels Strongly Connected To Stephen King's The Dark Tower

8. Desperation

Another novel (along with its mirror novel, The Regulators, written under King's pen name Richard Bachman) Desperation deals with multiple, reflecting worlds and monsters from the other side. Desperation sees the deputy of the mining town of the very same name, Desperation, Nevada, kidnapping just about anyone he encounters on the highway running through town. Said deputy, Collie Entragian, uses all sorts of tricks to pick people up, from faked drug charges to claiming a gunman is on the loose, but in the end, his captives realize that Entragian is not what he seems. Instead, he has been possessed by an evil presence named Tak, which is trapped beneath a mining pit, and which can control both humans and local wildlife.

It's quite clear that Tak originates in the Gunslinger's world, the world of The Dark Tower. The novel utilizes the Language of the Dead, something found throughout the Dark Tower novels. It refers to can-tah (little stone carvings, representing little gods) and can-tak (big gods), the ini (the Well of the Worlds, which is how Tak enters ours), and mentions can-toi - beings also referred to as "low men," who are humanoid, yet not human, but rather hybrids of humans and another race, the Taheen.

The can-toi have the faces of rats, but believe they will become human, and wear human faces over their own until that time - and to blend in, though rather poorly.