Misery's Return is the novel that Annie Wilkes forced Paul Sheldon to write in the novel, Misery, and in the movie adaptation. Spurned and infuriated when she learns that Misery's Child ended with Misery Chastain's death from childbirth, Annie buys Paul a Royal typewriter to write the novel while he recovers in her home from a car accident that left him with both legs broken.
In the book, he pretends to burn it when it is finished before killing Annie in a struggle. Paul actually hid the completed book, having it published after freeing himself from Annie's clutches. He is told that it will be his masterpiece.
In the film, he burns the actual book instead of a fake, and after Annie's death, he writes and has publishes a new non-Misery novel, The Higher Education of J. Philip Stone, which he says he wrote for himself.
The story itself appears in Misery as excerpts that Paul is gradually writing for Annie Wilkes, with the letters N, T and E written in manually—they are the keys that drop out of the old Royal typerwriter. The story is concerned with the revival of the central character of Paul's Misery series of books. In Misery's Child, Paul had let Misery herself die in childbirth. It is discovered that she was stung by a bee and had only lapsed into a deep coma.
For the first-run paperback release of Misery, a second cover of sorts was included just behind the front cover. It depicted Stephen King himself in a classic romance novel book cover image.