Coffey on the Mile

Book excerpt: The Green Mile, Stephen King’s #1 New York Times bestselling novel, was first published twenty years ago in six original paperback installments. Inspiration for the Oscar-nominated film starring Tom Hanks about an innocent man on death row, The Green Mile is now available for the first time in e-serial form. Coffey on the Mile is Volume Six. Cold Mountain Penitentiary has seen its share of men drawing their last breaths, with many of them claiming to be innocent until the very end. In this final chapter of the six-part novel, we learn both John Coffey's fate and the terrible truth Paul Edgecombe discovers about him. The story also brings us farther into the present as Paul recounts the events of his life after Cold Mountain—and the lives of all he encountered there. The gentle giant with healing hands. The little mouse that softened a murderer’s heart. The corrupt man capable of more evil than any of those he guarded. And all the wonderful and horrible men and moments in that place of ultimate retribution, the well-worn stretch of linoleum they called the Green Mile.