Misery

Paul Sheldon is a novelist best known for his Misery Chastain romance series. He's just finished a new literary novel — something more serious, his real work — at a remote Colorado lodge, and he's driving back to Denver through a winter storm when his car slides off the road. Annie Wilkes finds him buried in the snow. She's a former nurse. She brings him home and sets his legs.

Paul is bedridden, both legs shattered, dependent on the pain medication Annie controls. She's warm and attentive and tells him she's his number one fan. He's grateful. She reads his new manuscript while he recovers.

The manuscript ends with Misery Chastain dead. Annie is not okay with this. The warmth disappears. Paul learns quickly to manage her moods — her swings between childlike affection and cold fury — and realizes that the phone in the house doesn't work and the nearest town is miles away through snow.

When Annie discovers he's been out of his room, she hobbles him with a sledgehammer — one ankle, then the other — to make sure he doesn't try again. Paul is given a typewriter and told to write a new novel: Misery's Return. He begins.

The local sheriff has been asking around about Paul. He comes to the house. Annie kills him in the driveway. Paul sees it from his window. He is now the only person who knows what she's done, and he cannot walk.

Paul finishes the manuscript. He uses it as a distraction — setting it on fire — and when Annie tries to stop it, he attacks her with the typewriter. The fight is brutal and ugly. He kills her.

He is found. He recovers. The book he writes about what happened becomes a bestseller. At lunch with his editor in New York, he sees Annie's face on a stranger across the restaurant and looks away.