Small World (novel)

Small World is a horror novel by Tabitha King, as well as her first novel.

Roger Tinker is a thirty-something scientist who invents a portable device (the minimizer) which can shrink objects to doll-size (one-twelfth scale, perhaps?). A chance event enables him to meet Dorothy Hardesty Douglas, a middle-aged widow of a former U.S. president. One of Dorothy's passions is miniatures, and she in fact owns a rather expensive scale-model replica of the White House. For reasons that involve apparently no more than an adrenalin rush, Roger begins to use his minimizer to engage in theft. He steals a Testarossa automobile from a parking lot by miniaturizing it and walking off with it. Following that, there is the theft of a masterpiece painting from a museum. Then he and Dorothy engage in a night-time heist in which they steal an entire carousel from a nearby park; they carry it off in a duffel bag. Finally, one day Roger happens to spot Leyna Shaw, well-known TV journalist out jogging on the beach. He shrinks her to doll-size and kidnaps her. He and Dorothy then imprison her in the Doll White House. After much physical and psychological torture, she dies. Dorothy's pre-teen grandchildren also become victims of the shrinking process.