Here is the complete list of books published by Stephen King, an American author of fantasy, science fiction, suspense, and contemporary horror.
Stephen King has sold more than 350 million copies of his works worldwide, and many of them have been adapted into comic books, television movies, and feature films. He has published five non-fiction books, 63 novels, and even seven books under his pen name Richard Bachman.
Who Is Stephen King?
Born in Portland, Maine, on September 21, 1947, Stephen King worked as a teacher after graduating college while making a name for himself as a writer. His first horror novel, Carrie, was a commercial success.
Over the years, King has earned a gold reputation for his titles that became critically acclaimed and hugely successful, such as The Shawshank Redemption and The Shining.
When asked in an interview on why he loves to write, Stephen King answered: “The answer to that is fairly simple — there was nothing else I was made to do. I was made to write stories and I love to write stories. That’s why I do it. I really can’t imagine doing anything else and I can’t imagine not doing what I do.”
Other fun facts about Stephen King:
- Carrie was initially intended to be a short story, but King threw the first draft in the trash. Thankfully, his wife Tabitha rescued the draft.
- Stephen King published other works using his two pen names: John Swithen and Richard Bachman.
- More Stephen King books have been made into commercial movies than any other living writer.
- According to King, he credits The Lurcher of the Threshold by HP Lovecraft as the initial inspiration for him becoming a writer.
Stephen King has three children with wife, Tabitha Spruce, and four grandchildren.
Complete List of Stephen King Books with Summaries and Reviews
Here is Stephen King’s complete list of books along with a short summary:
1) Night Surf – 1969
Book Summary: ‘Night Surf’ is a post-apocalyptic short story by Stephen King, first published in the spring 1969 issue of Ubris magazine, and later collected in a heavily revised version in King’s 1978 collection Night Shift.Loosely related to the author’s highly regarded novel ‘The Stand’, the story occurs on an August night on Anson Beach, New Hampshire, with a group of former college students who survived a catastrophic plague caused by a virus called A6. They believe the virus spread out of Southeast Asia and wiped out most of humanity.”- Book Reviews:
2) Graveyard Shift – 1970
Book Summary: From horror master, Stephen King comes his most terror-filled tale yet… Gates Falls, Maine. When an abandoned textile mill is reopened, several employees meet mysterious deaths.
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3) Battleground – 1972
Book Summary: Stephen King’s Battleground is a definitive collection of Stephen King’s classic short story with which was adapted for television by Richard Christian Matheson. The book begins with King’s short story and then moves to R.C. Matheson’s script for the opening episode of “Nightmares and Dreamscapes”, which starred William Hurt and was directed by Brian Henson. Henson provides storyboards used for the episode which won two Emmy awards. The book will contain one signature (8 pages) of color photos from TNT’s archives; photos never before released.
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4) Trucks – 1973
Book Summary: * Trucks. Alle Fahrzeuge sind verrückt geworden und unterwerfen die Menschheit. Wird sie lange genug überleben, bis alle Maschinen von selbst verrosten?
* Kinder des Zorns. Das Ehepaar Vicky und Burt Robeson begegnen in der Geisterstadt Gatlin eine Gruppe von Kindern, die eine fürchertliche Gottheit im Mais anbeten.
* Quitters, Inc. Richard Morrison will sich das Rauchen abgewöhnen. Die Nonfumo-Gesellschaft hat allerdings seltsame Methoden Morrison die Glimmstängel unschmackhaft zu machen.
* Der Mauervorsprung. Der Ganove Cressner stellt der Affäre seiner Frau, Stan Norris, eine Aufgabe, durch die er vieles gewinnen, aber auch alles verlieren kann: Er soll auf dem Mauervorsprung einmal das Appartment im 43. Stock umrunden.
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5) Gray Matter – 1973
Book Summary: A story is told of a man who worked for the Bangor Public Works Department. He went down into the sewers and came out fifteen minutes later, his hair white. He saw a spider “as big as a good-sized dog sitting in a web full of kitties an’ such all wrapped up in silk thread.” He immediately quit with the Public Works Department. Our narrator says this about what his old friend saw: “I’m not saying there’s any truth in it, but I am saying there’s things in the corners of the world that would drive a man insane to look ’em right in the face.”
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6) Sometimes They Come Back – 1974
Book Summary: This is a movie that was originally made for television. Based on a short story by Stephen King, it follows a high school teacher who battles against some undead boys that come back for revenge on him and his family. Jim Norman is hesitant to take a job in the town where he witnessed the murder of his older brother, and the greasers who committed the act killed in an accident. However, he needs the work, and his wife thinks it is a chance for him and their family to start over after a history of breakdowns and anger issues that have cost Jim his previous career. However, shortly after getting to town, Jim finds that the students in his senior history class are slowly being killed off, only to be replaced by boys that look strangely familiar. After some odd occurrences, which involve the police suspecting Jim of the murder of the teens, he comes to the conclusion that the new students are in fact the boys who murdered his brother 27 years earlier, somehow come back to life. It is up to Jim to protect his family from their bloody vengeance.
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7) Carrie – 1974
Book Summary: Stephen King’s legendary debut, about a teenage outcast and the revenge she enacts on her classmates.Carrie White may be picked on by her classmates, but she has a gift. She can move things with her mind. Doors lock. Candles fall. This is her power and her problem. Then, an act of kindness, as spontaneous as the vicious taunts of her classmates, offers Carrie a chance to be a normal…until an unexpected cruelty turns her gift into a weapon of horror and destruction that no one will ever forget.
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8)’Salem’s Lot – 1975
Book Summary: Ben Mears has returned to Jerusalem’s Lot in hopes that exploring the history of the Marsten House, an old mansion long the subject of rumor and speculation, will help him cast out his personal devils and provide inspiration for his new book. But when two young boys venture into the woods, and only one returns alive, Mears begins to realize that something sinister is at work—in fact, his hometown is under siege from forces of darkness far beyond his imagination. And only he, with a small group of allies, can hope to contain the evil that is growing within the borders of this small New England town.With this, his second novel, Stephen King established himself as an indisputable master of American horror, able to transform the old conceits of the genre into something fresh and all the more frightening for taking place in a familiar, idyllic locale.
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9) The Shining – 1977
Book Summary: Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote . . . and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old.
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10) The Cat from Hell – 1977
Book Summary: This is a creepy tale about a hit man who is hired to kill a cat. The person who hires the assassin explains that the cat is from Hell and has already killed most of his family. The professional killer agrees to kill the animal, but it is not a simple act to kill the cat from Hell.
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11) The Man Who Loved Flowers – 1977
Book Summary: Now this was a short story that started off so charming and sweet and went all the way up to a terror and dark climax, actually a great plot twist too and it was so good I could I could even empathize with the Man who Loved Flowers. Love is contagious, even if it crosses the line.
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12) Rage – 1977
Book Summary: A hostage taking in a school that turns into a real group psychotherapy session…
Already in 1977, Richard Bachman (pseudo S.King), in the form of an original and violent fiction, questioned the possible causes
and origins of the various killings (mass or not) in school or university structures.
Just as with “Chantier”, “Walk or die”, or “Running man”, behind the sordid narrative, in a futuristic or non-futuristic world,
often see the “collateral damage” of our so-called modern societies, on individuals… Do
the same causes produce the same effects in 2018?… King
‘s analysis still seems to be valid more than 40 years later. A real sociologist, Stephen King…
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13) I Am the Doorway – 1978
Book Summary: I Am the Doorway is a science fiction short story by American writer Stephen King, first published in the March 1971 issue of Cavalier magazine, and later collected in King’s 1978 collection Night Shift.The story relates a disabled former astronaut’s account of the terrifying change he undergoes after being exposed to an extraterrestrial mutagen, during a space mission to Venus. Arthur, the narrator, begins the story with his hands bandaged, and complains of a terrible itching both after the mission and currently. The change takes the form of numerous tiny eyeballs which break out on his fingertips. These eyeballs act as the titular “doorway” for an alien species, allowing them to see into our world, but, seeing from an alien perspective, they view humans as horrifying monstrosities which, Arthur perceives, they fear and hate intensely.Soon, the alien presence is not only able to see through this doorway, but take control of Arthur’s shattered body, using him to commit terrible murders.
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14) Strawberry Spring – 1978
Book Summary: Night Shift—Stephen King’s first collection of stories—is an early showcase of the depths that King’s wicked imagination could plumb. In these 20 tales, we see mutated rats gone bad (“Graveyard Shift”); a cataclysmic virus that threatens humanity (“Night Surf,” the basis for The Stand); a smoker who will try anything to stop (“Quitters, Inc.”); a reclusive alcoholic who begins a gruesome transformation (“Gray Matter”); and many more. This is Stephen King at his horrifying best.
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15) The Mangler – 1978
Book Summary: The Mangler is a classic Stephen King story that steps out of the realm of possibility yet clings to the horror of the familiar. Its themes of industrialism and demonic possession are unlikely, but they work. In this film Stephen King touches a quite common theme in his fiction : the evilness of industrialism. But in this case the machine is not possessed by an animal monster like in The Nightshift, or by an It like in IT. It is possessed by the devil itself, but the devil of power. This machine, this devil needs sacrifice and those who have power have to sacrifice something to it to get this power. They have to feed its hunger for fresh blood, virginal blood and belladonna. The machine tries to eat the people who are using belladonna for their nerves and the machine receives human sacrifices from those who want power. If you want to evade giving a part of yourself, you have to sacrifice a young virginal sixteen-year-old girl of your family. And there is no way to stop it. It cannot be exorcised by anything. No holy water, no holy wafer, no biblical incantation will stop it, and even if one powerful person is sacrificed, then another one will benefit of this sacrifice, another one who will have given, by accident or willingly, a part of himself or herself, a finger or an arm. This vision of industrialism as a devilish possession is a rare way to show that industrial work is slavery and total alienation. This vision of power in this industrial society as a pact signed with the devil that inhabits the machine is a rare denunciation of capitalism. And yet, since this is linked to a tradition as old as humanity, it is human social life, and the organisation of human society on a power pattern that is denounced in the most general way. One little element shows how this power-giving and blood-hungry devil works : the photographer and then the intellectual who discover the existence of this devil and try to denounce it and even exorcise it are killed by the super power of this devil. It does not like being known. It likes secrecy and ignorance. The film is extremely effective in its powerful images and symbols and it is heart gripping. A very rare introduction to Stephen King’s realm of horror. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.
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16) The Woman in the Room – 1978
Book Summary: Narrated from the perspective of a man burdened with deep remorse, pain and his inner demons, the story concerns his decision to euthanize his terminally ill mother with painkillers. This story first appeared in Stephen King’s short story collection, “Night Shift”.
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17) I Know What You Need – 1978
Book Summary: Really interesting story. Steadily creepy with the lingering sense that something is wrong. Where “I Know What You Need” falls short is in the ending: anticlimactic and rushed.
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18) Quitters, Inc. – 1978
Book Summary: Dick Morrison’s life has become a nightmare of addictions, filling his days with overeating, overworking, and smoking way too much. When an old friend tells him about a surefire way to quit, he’s more than willing to give it a shot. But what Dick doesn’t know is that Quitters, Inc. demands a high price from anyone who strays from their rigid rules-like a few volts of electricity for the nearest and dearest… or maybe a missing thumb? Forced to choose between his desperate need for cigarettes and the dire consequences of giving in to his addiction, Dick must decide just how important another drag really is.
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19) Children of the Corn – 1978
Book Summary: A combination book containing 20 of Kings best short stories including Children of the Corn and has pictures of the making of the movie
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20) Night Shift – 1978
Book Summary: Never trust your heart to the New York Times bestselling master of suspense, Stephen King. Especially with an anthology that features the classic stories “Children of the Corn,” “The Lawnmower Man,” “Graveyard Shift,” “The Mangler,” and “Sometimes They Come Back”-which were all made into hit horror films. “Unbearable suspense.” (Dallas Morning News) From the depths of darkness, where hideous rats defend their empire, to dizzying heights, where a beautiful girl hangs by a hair above a hellish fate, this chilling collection of twenty short stories will plunge readers into the subterranean labyrinth of the most spine-tingling, eerie imagination of our time.
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21) The Stand – 1978
Book Summary: A patient escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out 99 percent of the world’s population within a few weeks. Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge—Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious “Dark Man,” who delights in chaos and violence. As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between them—and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.
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22) The Long Walk – 1979
Book Summary: In this #1 national bestseller, “master storyteller” (Houston Chronicle) Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, tells the tale of the contestants of a grueling walking competition where there can only be one winner—the one that survives.In the near future, when America has become a police state, one hundred boys are selected to enter an annual contest where the winner will be awarded whatever he wants for the rest of his life. Among them is sixteen-year-old Ray Garraty, and he knows the rules—keep a steady walking pace of four miles per hour without stopping. Three warnings and you’re out—permanently.A “psychologically dark tale with commentary on society, teenage life, and cultural entertainment, The Long Walk is still poignant decades after its original publication” (Publishers Weekly). This edition features an introduction by Stephen King on “The Importance of Being Bachman.”
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23) The Dead Zone – 1979 (New York Times Best Seller Book of Stephen King)
Book Summary: Johnny Smith awakens from a five-year coma after his car accident and discovers that he can see people’s futures and pasts when he touches them. Many consider his talent a gift; Johnny feels cursed. His fiancée married another man during his coma and people clamor for him to solve their problems.When Johnny has a disturbing vision after he shakes the hand of an ambitious and amoral politician, he must decide if he should take drastic action to change the future. With “powerful tension that holds the reader to the story like a pin to a magnet” (The Houston Post), The Dead Zone is a “faultlessly paced…continuously engrossing” (Los Angeles Times) novel of second sight.
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24) A Tale of The Laundry Game – 1979
Book Summary: Similarly to ‘The Milkman’, this was a short story around the daily lives of mechanics. For Stephen King this is a sub par below standard piece of work. It is very similar in style to the works of Erskine Caldwell, who, does become very repetitive in style. The only difference between King and Caldwell, was that there wasn’t a priest trying to convert someone or sleep with a member of the family he was residing with.
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25) Crouch End – 1980
Book Summary: The story is set around a small part of London with an American Couple. Although there are A LOT of unexplained incidents in this story, such as the Tube passengers, the child with a cloven hand, it doesn’t matter. If for nothing else, it adds to the mystique and psychological scariness off this story.
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26) The Mist – 1980
Book Summary: In the wake of a summer storm, terror descends…David Drayton, his son Billy, and their neighbor Brent Norton join dozens of others and head to the local grocery store to replenish supplies following a freak storm. Once there, they become trapped by a strange mist that has enveloped the town. As the confinement takes its toll on their nerves, a religious zealot, Mrs. Carmody, begins to play on their fears to convince them that this is God’s vengeance for their sins. She insists a sacrifice must be made and two groups—those for and those against—are aligned. Clearly, staying in the store may prove fatal, and the Draytons, along with store employee Ollie Weeks, Amanda Dumfries, Irene Reppler, and Dan Miller, attempt to make their escape. But what’s out there may be worse than what they left behind.This exhilarating novella explores the horror in both the enemy you know—and the one you can only imagine.
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27) Firestarter – 1980 (New York Times Best Seller Book of Stephen King)
Book Summary: Andy McGee and Vicky Tomlinson were once college students looking to make some extra cash, volunteering as test subjects for an experiment orchestrated by the clandestine government organization known as The Shop. But the outcome unlocked exceptional latent psychic talents for the two of them—manifesting in even more terrifying ways when they fell in love and had a child. Their daughter, Charlie, has been gifted with the most extraordinary and uncontrollable power ever seen—pyrokinesis, the ability to create fire with her mind. Now the merciless agents of The Shop are in hot pursuit to apprehend this unexpected genetic anomaly for their own diabolical ends by any means necessary…including violent actions that may well ignite the entire world around them as Charlie retaliates with a fury of her own….
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28) The Jaunt – 1981
Book Summary: “The Jaunt” is a horror short story by Stephen King first published in The Twilight Zone Magazine in 1981, and collected in King’s 1985 collection Skeleton Crew.The story takes place early in the 24th century, when the technology for teleportation, referred to as “Jaunting”, is commonplace, allowing for instantaneous transportation across enormous distances, even to other planets in the solar system. The government, which learned of the Jaunt through its inventor’s use of a computer database in his experiments, soon took control of the project, demoting the scientist to a figurehead in the program. After the introduction of the Jaunt to the public in 1991, the country experienced a strong economic boom, and the price of oil declined to such an extent that OPEC disbanded. Due to environmental pollution, water became a more expensive and profitable commodity than oil by 2006.
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29) The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands – 1981
Book Summary: At a private club in Manhattan, an elderly man named George Gregson recounts a card game he played many years ago where he met an odd man named Henry Brower who refused to touch anyone, recoiling from contact in fear. After Brower wins the game, another player, Jason Davidson, leaps up and shakes his hand enthusiastically, causing Brower to scream and bolt from the room. Gregson then makes it his mission to find him and give him his winnings. It’s revealed shortly thereafter that Davidson had died of a brain aneurysm. Gregson speaks with an old associate of the man, who tells him that Brower was cursed by an Indian shaman after an unfortunate incident in Bombay in which he accidentally caused the death of a boy. From that moment on, Brower has been cursed to cause the death of any living thing he touches. Gregson then attempts to track down Brower and meets an innkeeper who tells him that he discovered Brower dead in the inn, one hand firmly clasped in the other.
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30) It: A Novel – 1981
Book Summary: Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real.They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers.Readers of Stephen King know that Derry, Maine, is a place with a deep, dark hold on the author. It reappears in many of his books, including Bag of Bones, Hearts in Atlantis, and 11/22/63. But it all starts with It.
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31) Roadwork – 1981
Book Summary: Only Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, can imagine the horror of a good and angry man who fights back against bureaucracy when it threatens to destroy his vitality, home, and memories. “Under any name King mesmerizes the reader” (Chicago Sun-Times).Barton Dawes is standing in the way of progress when his unremarkable but comfortable existence suddenly takes a turn for the worst. A new highway extension is being built right over the laundry plant where he works—and right over his home. The house he has lived in for twenty years and where he created loving memories with his family. Dawes isn’t the sort of man who will take an insult of this magnitude lying down. His steadfast determination to fight the inevitable course of progress drives his wife and friends away while he tries to face down the uncaring bureaucracy that has destroyed his life. But before the city paves over that part of Dawes’s life, he’s got one more party to throw—and it’ll be a blast.What happens when one good (and angry) man fights back…and then some? This #1 national bestseller includes an introduction by Stephen King on “The Importance of Being Bachman.”
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32) Danse Macabre – 1981
Book Summary: Before he gave us the “one of a kind classic” (The Wall Street Journal) memoir On Writing, Stephen King wrote a nonfiction masterpiece in Danse Macabre, “one of the best books on American popular culture” (Philadelphia Inquirer).From the author of dozens of #1 New York Times bestsellers and the creator of many unforgettable movies comes a vivid, intelligent, and nostalgic journey through three decades of horror as experienced through the eyes of the most popular writer in the genre. In 1981, years before he sat down to tackle On Writing, Stephen King decided to address the topic of what makes horror horrifying and what makes terror terrifying. Here, in ten brilliantly written chapters, King delivers one colorful observation after another about the great stories, books, and films that comprise the horror genre—from Frankenstein and Dracula to The Exorcist, The Twilight Zone, and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers.With the insight and good humor his fans appreciated in On Writing, Danse Macabre is an enjoyably entertaining tour through Stephen King’s beloved world of horror.
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33) Cujo – 1981
Book Summary: Outside a peaceful town in central Maine, a monster is waiting. Cujo is a two-hundred-pound Saint Bernard, the best friend Brett Camber has ever had. One day, Cujo chases a rabbit into a cave inhabited by sick bats and emerges as something new altogether.Meanwhile, Vic and Donna Trenton, and their young son Tad, move to Maine. They are seeking peace and quiet, but life in this small town is not what it seems. As Tad tries to fend off the terror that comes to him at night from his bedroom closet, and as Vic and Donna face their own nightmare of a marriage on the rocks, there is no way they can know that a monster, infinitely sinister, waits in the daylight.What happens to Cujo, how he becomes a horrifying vortex inescapably drawing in all the people around him, makes for one of the most heart-stopping novels Stephen King has ever written. “A genuine page-turner that grabs you and holds you and won’t let go” (Chattanooga Times), Cujo will forever change how you view man’s best friend.
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34) Survivor Type – 1982
Book Summary: Survivor Type is a short story by Stephen King, first published in the 1982 horror anthology Terrors, edited by Charles L. Grant, and collected in King’s 1985 collection Skeleton Crew. This is a graphic adaptation of the short story, adapted and illustrated by Max Miller.
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35) Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption – 1982
Book Summary: In The Shawshank Redemption, a man convicted of bloody murder lives in a prison brutally ruled by a sadistic warden and secretly run by a con who knows all the ropes and pulls all the strings. He has more brains than anyone else in this sinister slammer, and a diabolically cunning plan of revenge that no one can guess until it’s far too late.And brace yourself for icy shock in three more stunning novellas of suspense. Four young boys come face to face with life, death, and hints of their own mortality…a teenager becomes both the puppet and the puppet master of evil…a disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death. The greatest horror master of our time turns the screws of suspense to lock you into ‘terrifying tension and nerve-tingling twists.
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36) The Running Man – 1982
Book Summary: “Tomorrow at noon, the hunt begins. Remember his face!”Ben Richards is a desperate man. With no job, no money, no way out, and a young daughter in need of proper medical attention, he must turn to the only possibility of striking it rich in this near-future dystopian America: participating in the ultra-violent TV programming of the government-sanctioned Games Network. Ben soon finds himself selected as a contestant on the biggest and the best that the Games Network has to offer: “The Running Man,” a no-holds-barred thirty-day struggle to stay alive as public enemy number one, relentlessly hunted by an elite strike force bent on killing him as quickly as possible in front of an audience all-too eager to see that happen. It means a billion dollars in prize money if he can live for the next month. No one has ever survived longer than eight days. But desperation can push a person do things they never thought possible—and Ben Richards is willing to go the distance in this ultimate game of life and death….
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37) The Gunslinger – 1982
Book Summary: “An impressive work of mythic magnitude that may turn out to be Stephen King’s greatest literary achievement” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), The Gunslinger is the first volume in the epic Dark Tower Series.A #1 national bestseller, The Gunslinger introduces readers to one of Stephen King’s most powerful creations, Roland of Gilead: The Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which mirrors our own in frightening ways, Roland tracks The Man in Black, encounters an enticing woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the boy from New York named Jake.
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38) Creepshow – 1982
Book Summary: The graphic novel adaptation of Stephen King’s Creepshow, based on the 1982 horror anthology and cult classic film directed by George Romero (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead)—and featuring stunning illustrations by the legendary Bernie Wrightson and cover art by the acclaimed Jack Kamen! A harrowing and darkly humorous tribute to the controversial and influential horror comics of the 1950s, Creepshow presents five sinister stories from the #1 New York Times bestselling author—“Father’s Day,” “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill,” “Something to Tide You Over,” “The Crate,” and “They’re Creeping Up on You”…unforgettable tales of terror to haunt your days and nights!
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39) The Body – 1982
Book Summary: It’s 1960 in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine. Ray Brower, a boy from a nearby town, has disappeared, and twelve-year-old Gordie Lachance and his three friends set out on a quest to find his body along the railroad tracks. During the course of their journey, Gordie, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio come to terms with death and the harsh truths of growing up in a small factory town that doesn’t offer much in the way of a future.A timeless exploration of the loneliness and isolation of young adulthood, Stephen King’s The Body is an iconic, unforgettable, coming-of-age story.
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40) Fall from Innocence – 1982
Book Summary: Gordie Lanchanche is the narrator of this story, and he tells us about what’s happened when he was 12, nearly thirteen years, in 1960, growing up in (the fictional) Maine town of Castle Rock.Four boys go to look for a supposed dead body by the railway tracks. Gordie, Teddy, Vern and Chris hang out together, and each have their own problems. This will be an adventure they won’t forget. Even though they go and will eventually find the dead body, it is not a horror story but about ‘growing up’.It is one of the books which I truly struggle to review. At a basic level, it’s a story about four boys going on an adventure, but that doesn’t even start to describe the depth of this story. Friendship, bereavement, bullying, mental health, feeling lost in the world, finding oneself, being born in the family of ‘no gooders’ and trying to better yourself. Beautifully written, it stayed with me for a long time. The ending is very poignant, and for me, has one of the best lines every written in book history:“ I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anybody?”
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41) Different Seasons – 1982 (New York Times Best Seller Book of Stephen King)
Book Summary: A “hypnotic” (The New York Times Book Review) collection of four novellas—including the inspirations behind the films Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption—from Stephen King, bound together by the changing of seasons, each taking on the theme of a journey with strikingly different tones and characters.This gripping collection begins with “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” in which an unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge—the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award-nominee The Shawshank Redemption.Next is “Apt Pupil,” the inspiration for the film of the same name about top high school student Todd Bowden and his obsession with the dark and deadly past of an older man in town.In “The Body,” four rambunctious young boys plunge through the façade of a small town and come face-to-face with life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. This novella became the movie Stand By Me.Finally, a disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death in “The Breathing Method.”
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42) The Breathing Method – 1982
Book Summary: There is a strange club in New York where men tell each other stories. The years pass but no one looks any older. One night a doctor tells the story of a young woman who gives birth to a baby in the most horrible way! Evil psychic powers, obsession and the supernatural in the most ordinary, everyday places. A spine-chiller from the master of horror.
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43) The Raft – 1982
Book Summary: The Raft is a horror short story by Stephen King first published as a booklet included with Gallery in November 1982, and collected in King’s 1985 collection Skeleton Crew.
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44) Uncle Otto’s Truck – 1983
Book Summary: This is a story of psychological terror. Something that resembles the tales of Ambrose Bierce and some narratives of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. A story that points to our cognitive processes and memory, where a simple childish fear can become a cruel reality.
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45) Word Processor of the Gods – 1983
Book Summary: Richard Hagstrom, professeur d’anglais et écrivain raté, a du mal à se préserver un espace vital entre une épouse dominatrice et un fils qui le méprise. Il est en revanche toujours amoureux de Belinda, la femme que son frère a épousée, et il adore leur fils Jon, un petit génie de l’électronique. Après que son frère, conduisant en état d’ivresse, a entraîné dans la mort Belinda et Hon, Richard reçoit un cadeau posthume de ce dernier : un appareil de traitement de texte bricolé à partir de certaines pièces disparates. Il découvre alors que cette machine lui donne un droit de vie ou de mort sur les personnes dont il tape le nom…
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46) Christine – 1983
Book Summary: Evil is alive in Libertyville. It inhabits a custom-painted red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury named Christine and young Arnold Cunningham, who buys it.Along with Arnold’s girlfriend, Leigh Cabot, Dennis Guilder attempts to find out the real truth behind Christine and finds more than he bargained for: from murder to suicide, there’s a peculiar feeling that surrounds Christine—she gets revenge on anyone standing in her path.Can Dennis save Arnold from the wrath of Christine? This #1 national bestseller is “Vintage Stephen King…breathtaking…awesome. Carries such momentum the reader must force himself to slow down”
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47) Cycle of the Werewolf – 1983
Book Summary: Terror began in January—by the light of the full moon…The first scream came from the snowbound railwayman who felt the werewolf’s fangs ripping at his throat. The next month there was a scream of ecstatic agony from the woman attacked in her cozy bedroom. Now scenes of unbelievable horror unfold each time the full moon shines on the isolated Maine town of Tarker’s Mills. No one knows who will be attacked next. But one thing is sure. When the full moon rises, a paralyzing fear sweeps through Tarker’s Mills. For snarls that sound like human words can be heard whining through the wind. And all around are the footprints of a monster whose hunger cannot be sated…
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48) Pet Sematary – 1983 (New York Times Best Seller Book of Stephen King)
Book Summary: When Dr. Louis Creed takes a new job and moves his family to the idyllic rural town of Ludlow, Maine, this new beginning seems too good to be true. Despite Ludlow’s tranquility, an undercurrent of danger exists here. Those trucks on the road outside the Creed’s beautiful old home travel by just a little too quickly, for one thing…as is evidenced by the makeshift graveyard in the nearby woods where generations of children have buried their beloved pets. Then there are the warnings to Louis both real and from the depths of his nightmares that he should not venture beyond the borders of this little graveyard where another burial ground lures with seductive promises and ungodly temptations. A blood-chilling truth is hidden there—one more terrifying than death itself, and hideously more powerful. As Louis is about to discover for himself sometimes, dead is better…
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49) The Eyes of the Dragon – 1984
Book Summary: “It is just not possible to stop turning the pages” (The Washington Post) of this bestselling classic tale—an epic fantasy as only Stephen King could envision it.“Once, in a kingdom called Delain, there was a king with two sons….”Thus begins one of the most unique tales that master storyteller Stephen King has ever written—a sprawling fantasy of dark magic and the struggle for absolute power that utterly transforms the destinies of two brothers born into royalty. Through this enthralling masterpiece of mythical adventure, intrigue, and terror, you will thrill to this unforgettable narrative filled with relentless, wicked enchantment, and the most terrible of secrets….
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50) The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet – 1984
Book Summary: The main character is Henry, fiction editor for the struggling Logan’s magazine. Henry receives an unsolicited short story from up-and-coming novelist Reg Thorpe, and considers the story to be very dark, but also a masterpiece. Through his correspondence with Thorpe, Henry learns of—and, due to Henry’s own alcoholism, eventually begins to believe in—Thorpe’s various paranoid fantasies. Most notably, Henry and Thorpe believe that their typewriters serve as homes for Fornits—tiny elves who bring creativity and good luck. The story, told from Henry’s perspective as he relays it in anecdotal form at a barbecue, concerns Henry’s descent into Thorpe’s madness. Meanwhile, Henry also struggles to get Thorpe’s story published, despite the fact that Logan’s is in the process of closing its fiction department.
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51) Gramma – 1984
Book Summary: This story brings family scandal up close and very personal to the young hero left at home alone to look after an invalid grandma for a few hours. The boy’s instinctive fear of the old lady is tested in a few horrifying minutes where she acts like the old witch she is suspected of being. The tale is particularly chilling because of King’s ability to glide from the natural to the supernatural without the reader struggling to suspend disbelief along the way. The point of view of the old lady was from the eyes of a child and was not a compassionate view and was not likely intended to be considering the evil nature of grandma. It emphasized all the physical frailties of aging.
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52) Dark Visions – 1984
Book Summary: Take three of the leading names in contemporary horror writing, commission one-third of a book’s worth of stories from each, and the result is Dark Visions.
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53) Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut – 1984
Book Summary: Ophelia Todd is always looking for a shorter distance between two points, so she just wrinkles the map a little–until she gets caught in one of the wrinkles.
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54) The Talisman – 1984
Book Summary: The iconic, “extraordinary” (The Washington Post) collaboration between bestselling authors Stephen King and Peter Straub—an epic thriller about a young boy’s quest to save his mother’s life.Jack Sawyer, twelve years old, is about to begin a most fantastic journey, an exalting, terrifying quest for the mystical Talisman—the only thing that can save Jack’s dying mother. But to reach his goal, Jack must make his way not only across the breadth of the United States but also through the wondrous and menacing parallel world of the Territories.In the Territories, Jack finds another realm, where the air is so sweet and clear a man can smell a radish being pulled from the ground a mile away—and a life can be snuffed out instantly in the continuing struggle between good and evil. Here Jack discovers “Twinners,” reflections of the people he knows on earth—most notably Queen Laura, the Twinner of Jack’s own imperiled mother. As Jack “flips” between worlds, making his way westward toward the redemptive Talisman, a sequence of heart-stopping encounters challenges him at every step.An unforgettable epic of adventure and resounding triumph, The Talisman is one of the most influential and highly praised works of fantasy ever written.
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55) Thinner – 1984
Book Summary: “You can’t do anything… It’s gone too far. You understand, Halleck? Too…far.Attorney Billy Halleck seriously enjoys living his life of upper-class excess. He’s got it all—an expensive home in Connecticut, a loving family…and fifty extra pounds that his doctor repeatedly warns will be the death of him. Then, in a moment of carelessness, Halleck commits vehicular manslaughter when he strikes a jaywalking old woman crossing the street. But Halleck has some powerful local connections, and gets off with a slap on the wrist…much to the fury of the woman’s mysterious and ancient father, who exacts revenge with a single word: “Thinner.” Now a terrified Halleck finds the weight once so difficult to shed dropping effortlessly—and rapidly—by the week. Soon there will be nothing left of Billy Halleck…unless he can somehow locate the source of his living nightmare and reverse what’s happened to him before he utterly wastes away…
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56) Skeleton Crew – 1985 (New York Times Best Seller Book of Stephen King)
Book Summary: The #1 New York Times bestseller and winner of the 1986 Locus Award for Best Collection, Skeleton Crew is “Stephen King at his best” (The Denver Post)—a terrifying, mesmerizing collection of stories from the outer limits of one of the greatest imaginations of our time.“Wildly imaginative, delightfully diabolical…King once again proves to be the consummate storyteller” (The Associated Press).A supermarket becomes the place where humanity makes its last stand against destruction. A trip to the attic becomes a journey to hell. A woman driving a Jaguar finds a scary shortcut to paradise. An idyllic lake harbors a bottomless evil. And a desert island is the scene of the most terrifying struggle for survival ever waged. This “wonderfully gruesome” collection (The New York Times Book Review) includes: “The Mist”; “Here There Be Tygers”; “The Monkey”; “Cain Rose Up”; “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut”; “The Jaunt”; “The Wedding Gig”; “Paranoid: A Chant”; “The Raft”; “Word Processor of the Gods”; “The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands”; “Beachworld”; “The Reaper’s Image”; “Nona”; “For Owen”; “Survivor Type”; “Uncle Otto’s Truck”; “Morning Deliveries (Milkman No. 1)”; “Big Wheels: a Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkman No. 2)”; “Gramma”; “The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet”; and “The Reach.”King is best known for his iconic, immersive long novels, but he is also a master of the short story, and this is a magnificent collection.
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57) Cain Rose Up – 1985
Book Summary: “Cain Rose Up” is a horror short story by American writer Stephen King. It was originally published in the Spring 1968 issue of Ubris magazine, and collected in King’s Skeleton Crew in 1985. It deals with a depressed and homicidal college student, Curt Garrish, who goes on a murderous sniper rampage from his dormitory room.
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58) Here There Be Tygers – 1985
Book Summary: Charles is a third grader. He really needs to go to the bathroom and his “mean” teacher Miss Bird asks him if he has to go before she allows him, embarrassing him. (“Very well Charles. You may go to the bathroom and urinate. Is that what you need to do? Urinate?”) Arriving at the lavatory, he peeks around the corner, and sees a tiger lying on the bathroom floor. He stands at the door, too afraid to enter.
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59) The Bachman Books – 1985
Book Summary: Paperback. Pub Date :2012-12-20 Pages: 992 Language: English Publisher: Hodder Paperback For years. readers wrote asking if Richard Bachman was really world-bestselling Stephen King writing under another name. Now the secret is out – and so. brought together in one volume. are these three spellbinding stories of future shock and suspense.The Long Walk: A chilling look at the ultra-conservative America of the future where a gruelling 450-mile marathon is the ultimate sports competition.Roadwork: An immovable man refuses to surrender to the irresistible force of progress.The Running Man: TVs future-favourite game show. where contestants are hunted to death in the attempt to win a 1 billion jackpot.
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60) The End of the Whole Messt – 1986
Book Summary: Stephen King’s unparalleled imagination is in full force in this collection of four unabridged short stories originally found in the classic, Nightmares & Dreamscapes. An all-star cast of readers bring to life these timeless stories from the darkest places.One man’s pursuit of world peace turns deadly in The End of the Whole Mess. Stephen King puts his spin on the familiar duo of Holmes and Watson in The Doctor’s Case. In The Moving Finger, menace arrives poking out of the drain of a bathroom sink. And a young, pregnant widow takes on a zombie attack in Home Delivery.Matthew Broderick, Tim Curry, Eve Beglarian and Stephen King lend their voices to this haunting collection of classic stories that no Stephen King fan should be without.
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61) It – 1986 (New York Times Best Seller Book of Stephen King)
- Book Summary: It: Chapter Two—now a major motion picture!Stephen King’s terrifying, classic #1 New York Times bestseller, “a landmark in American literature” (Chicago Sun-Times)—about seven adults who return to their hometown to confront a nightmare they had first stumbled on as teenagers…an evil without a name: It.Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real.They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers.Readers of Stephen King know that Derry, Maine, is a place with a deep, dark hold on the author. It reappears in many of his books, including Bag of Bones, Hearts in Atlantis, and 11/22/63. But it all starts with It.
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62) The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three – 1987
Book Summary: The second volume in Stephen King’s #1 bestselling Dark Tower Series, The Drawing of the Three is an “epic in the making” (Kirkus Reviews) about a savage struggle against underworld evil and otherworldly enemies.“Stephen King is a master at creating living, breathing, believable characters,” hails The Baltimore Sun. Beginning just less than seven hours after The Gunslinger ends, in the second installment to the thrilling Dark Tower Series, Roland encounters three mysterious doorways on a deserted beach along the Western Sea. Each one enters into a different person’s life in New York—here, he joins forces with the defiant young Eddie Dean, and with the beautiful, brilliant, and brave Odetta Holmes, to save the Dark Tower.“This quest is one of King’s best…it communicates on a genuine, human level…but is rich in symbolism and allegory” (Columbus Sunday Dispatch). It is a science fiction odyssey that is unlike any tale that Stephen King has ever written.
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63) Misery – 1987 (New York Times Best Seller Book of Stephen King)
Book Summary: Paul Sheldon is a bestselling novelist who has finally met his number one fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes, and she is more than a rabid reader—she is Paul’s nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also furious that the author has killed off her favorite character in his latest book. Annie becomes his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house.Annie wants Paul to write a book that brings Misery back to life—just for her. She has a lot of ways to spur him on. One is a needle. Another is an axe. And if they don’t work, she can get really nasty.
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64) The Tommyknockers – 1987
Book Summary: Master storyteller Stephen King presents the classic, terrifying #1 New York Times bestseller about a terrifying otherworldly discovery and the effects it has a on a small town.“Late last night and the night before, Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door…”On a beautiful June day, while walking deep in the woods on her property in Haven, Maine, Bobbi Anderson quite literally stumbles over her own destiny and that of the entire town. For the dull gray metal protrusion she discovers in the ground is part of a mysterious and massive metal object, one that may have been buried there for millennia. Bobbi can’t help but become obsessed and try to dig it out…the consequences of which will affect and transmute every citizen of Haven, young and old. It means unleashing extraordinary powers beyond those of mere mortals—and certain death for any and all outsiders. An alien hell has now invaded this small New England town…an aggressive and violent malignancy devoid of any mercy or sanity…
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65) Nightmares in the Sky – 1988
Book Summary: This book will be a collection of fantastic and horrifying photographs of gargoyles taken by avant-garde photographer f-stop fitzgerald (yes, that’s his name and the spellingis correct), with a wonderful text by none other than the master of horror, stephen king. F-stop has captured gargoyles in all manner of poses, made all the more striking by the design by mark pollard. Through the use of gatefolds and full-bleed illustrations, these awesome creatures will seem practically to leap off the page.
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66) The Night Flier – 1988
Book Summary: Rival reporters (Miguel Ferrer, Julie Entwisle) tail a vampire who travels by airplane, claiming victims at small isolated airports.
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67) Dolan’s Cadillac – 1989
Book Summary: The narrator, known only by his surname, Robinson, is a schoolteacher who lives in Las Vegas. He has become a widower after Dolan, a wealthy crime-boss, had his wife murdered with a car bomb in order to prevent her from testifying against him. The murder remains unsolved, and Robinson, unskilled in the arts of revenge, has no recourse. Over a seven-year period, however, Robinson—mentally haunted by his wife’s voice—devises a scheme of retaliation.Discovering that Dolan regularly takes the same route along State Route 71 when traveling to Los Angeles while in his Cadillac, Robinson decides to trick Dolan into missing a detour, which leads the Cadillac to crash into a ditch and he’ll be buried alive; while the Cadillac is armored against most conventional forms of attack, he realized he can use that against Dolan. He takes on a summer job with a road paving crew so that he can learn to operate the heavy equipment needed to excavate an oblong ditch just long and deep enough to contain the car, but not so wide as to allow escape through its doors.The trap works, and Dolan is stuck in his Cadillac as it crashes into the pit. One of Dolan’s bodyguards is killed in the crash, while the other, crushed by the engine block, screams out in pain and panic, prompting Dolan to kill him. Robinson greets him and announces his intent on burying Dolan alive. Dolan addresses Robinson by name, prompting him to lean over the roof of the car as Dolan fires a few bullets skyward. He misses Robinson, who proceeds with the burial.Dolan, increasingly desperate, pleads with Robinson for his freedom, offering him a large sum of cash. Robinson merely tells him he will be released if he screams as loud as the explosives that killed his wife, gleefully listening to Dolan’s cries as he completes the burial and paves over his car. With what must be the last gasp of air left to him, Dolan screams out, “For the love of God, Robinson!” (An allusion to The Cask of Amontillado) as the latter drops the last piece of paving into place.Robinson pays a relatively small price of undergoing much physical and mental exhaustion, but he feels satisfied that he has done a great service to the memory of his late wife, whose voice finally falls silent; this silence is something of a relief to Robinson. The press reports Dolan missing, joking that he is “playing dominos or shooting pool somewhere with Jimmy Hoffa.”Robinson notes that he often traveled along the same highway to the area where he buried Dolan alive. During his final trip, he urinated on the spot where he thought Dolan was buried. He notes that this was his final trip down the highway and that he now takes an alternate route. Robinson’s wife’s voice no longer haunts him, and he finds this a relief.
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68) Feast of Fear: Conversations With Stephen King – 1989
Book Summary: “Cain Rose Up” is a horror short story by American writer Stephen King. It was originally published in the Spring 1968 issue of Ubris magazine, and collected in King’s Skeleton Crew in 1985. It deals with a depressed and homicidal college student, Curt Garrish, who goes on a murderous sniper rampage from his dormitory room.
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69) My Pretty Pony – 1989
Book Summary: My Pretty Pony first appeared in 1988 as a deluxe limited edition in the Whitney Museum’s Artists and Writers Series. This trade edition reproduces the original lithographs. 13.5×9″, unpaginated (64 pp).
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70) The Dark Half – 1989
Book Summary: A “wondrously frightening” (Publishers Weekly) tale of terror and #1 national bestseller about a writer’s pseudonym that comes alive and destroys everyone on the path that leads to the man who created him.Thad Beaumont is a writer, and for a dozen years he has secretly published violent bestsellers under the name of George Stark. But Thad is a healthier and happier man now, the father of infant twins, and starting to write as himself again. He no longer needs George Stark and so, with nationwide publicity, the pseudonym is retired. But George Stark won’t go willingly.And now Thad would like to say he is innocent. He’d like to say he has nothing to do with the twisted imagination that produced his bestselling novels. He’d like to say he has nothing to do with the series of monstrous murders that keep coming closer to his home. But how can Thad deny the ultimate embodiment of evil that goes by the name he gave it—and signs its crimes with Thad’s bloody fingerprints?The Dark Half is “a chiller” (The New York Times Book Review), so real and fascinating that you’ll find yourself squirming in Stephen King’s heart-stopping, blood-curdling grip—and loving every minute of it.
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71) Langoliers – 1990
Book Summary: On a cross-country, redeye flight from Los Angeles to Boston, ten passengers awaken in Bangor, Maine, to find that the crew and most of their fellow passengers have disappeared. The airport shows no signs of life. Yet they hear “radio static” in the distance. Craig Toomey, an irritable investment banker on the verge of a breakdown, believes it is “The Langoliers,” monsters he was afraid of as a child who attack those who waste time. It’s mystery author Bob Jenkins who first theorizes that they have flown through a time rip. Bob declares they have entered a place that forbids time travelers to observe or interfere with past events. It turns out that Craig is right, in a way. Two creatures, followed by hundreds more, emerge from the forest and head for the plane, consuming everything in their path. Can the survivors manage to fly the plane back to Los Angeles, back to the correct time, before The Langoliers succeed in their deadly mission to destroy the plane and the world? Dinah Bellman, the young blind girl whose aunt did not survive the time rip, has the greatest insight of all.A spine-tingling, propulsive novella, The Langoliers is a brilliant read from the masterful Stephen King.
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72) The Library Policeman – 1990
Book Summary: In Junction City, Iowa, a middle-aged businessman who returns his overdue library books is faced with a malevolent monster of a librarian.
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73) The Sun Dog – 1990
Book Summary: “Cain Rose Up” is a horror short story by American writer Stephen King. It was originally published in the Spring 1968 issue of Ubris magazine, and collected in King’s Skeleton Crew in 1985. It deals with a depressed and homicidal college student, Curt Garrish, who goes on a murderous sniper rampage from his dormitory room.
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74) Minuit 4 – 1990
Book Summary: Vous êtes-vous déjà demandé ce qui se passait après minuit ? Tout bascule. Le temps se courbe, s’étire, se replie ou se brise en emportant parfois un morceau de réel. Et qu’arrive-t-il à celui qui regarde, les yeux écarquillés, la vitre entre réel et irréel quand elle explose et que des aiguilles de verre se mettent à voler en tous sens ?Les cauchemars de Stephen King vous ont empêché de dormir avec Minuit 2. Avec Minuit 4, la nuit sera encore plus longue.
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75) Four Past Midnight – 1990
Book Summary: The Bram Stoker Prize-winner for Best Fiction Collection—four chilling novellas from Stephen King that will “grab you and not let go” (The Washington Post).With the success of the Hulu series 11/22/63 starring James Franco and the highly anticipated The Dark Tower movie release, Stephen King’s brand is stronger than ever. This collection, nominated for a Locus Award, is guaranteed to keep readers awake long after bedtime, and features an introduction and prefatory notes to each novella by the author. “Stephen King is a master storyteller, and you will never forget these stories,” raves the Seattle Times about Four Past Midnight.One Past Midnight: “The Langoliers” takes a red-eye flight from LA to Boston into a most unfriendly sky. Only eleven passengers survive, but landing in an eerily empty world makes them wish they hadn’t. Something’s waiting for them, you see.Two Past Midnight: “Secret Window, Secret Garden” enters the suddenly strange life of writer Mort Rainey, recently divorced, depressed, and alone on the shore of Tashmore Lake. Alone, that is, until a figure named John Shooter arrives, pointing an accusing finger.Three Past Midnight: “The Library Policeman” is set in Junction City, Iowa, an unlikely place for evil to be hiding. But for small businessman Sam Peebles, who thinks he may be losing his mind, another enemy is hiding there as well—the truth. If he can find it in time, he might stand a chance.Four Past Midnight: “The Sun Dog,” a menacing black dog, appears in every Polaroid picture that fifteen-year-old Kevin Delevan takes with his new camera, beckoning him to the supernatural. Old Pop Merrill, Castle Rock’s sharpest trader, aims to exploit The Sun Dog for profit, but this creature that shouldn’t exist at all, is a very dangerous investment.
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76) The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands – 1991
Book Summary: The third volume in the #1 nationally bestselling Dark Tower Series, involving the enigmatic Roland (the last gunfighter) and his ongoing quest for the Dark Tower, is “Stephen King at his best” (School Library Journal).Several months have passed since The Drawing of the Three, and in The Waste Lands, Roland’s two new tet-mates have become trained gunslingers. Eddie Dean has given up heroin, and Odetta’s two selves have joined, becoming the stronger and more balanced personality of Susannah Dean. But Roland altered ka by saving the life of Jake Chambers, a boy who—in Roland’s world—has already died. Now Roland and Jake exist in different worlds, but they are joined by the same madness: the paradox of double memories. Roland, Susannah, and Eddie must draw Jake into Mid-World and then follow the Path of the Beam all the way to the Dark Tower. There are new evils…new dangers to threaten Roland’s little band in the devastated city of Lud and the surrounding wastelands, as well as horrific confrontations with Blaine the Mono, the piratical Gasher, and the frightening Tick-Tock Man.The Dark Tower Series continues to show Stephen King as a master of his craft. What lands, what peoples has he visited that are so unreachable to us except in the pages of his incredible books? Now Roland’s strange odyssey continues. The Waste Lands follows The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three as the third volume in what may be the most extraordinary and imaginative cycle of tales in the English language.
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77) Needful Things – 1991
Book Summary: Master storyteller Stephen King presents the classic #1 New York Times bestseller about a mysterious store than can sell you whatever you desire—but not without exacting a terrible price in return.The town of Castle Rock, Maine has seen its fair share of oddities over the years, but nothing is as peculiar as the little curio shop that’s just opened for business here. Its mysterious proprietor, Leland Gaunt, seems to have something for everyone out on display at Needful Things…interesting items that run the gamut from worthless to priceless. Nothing has a price tag in this place, but everything is certainly for sale. The heart’s desire for any resident of Castle Rock can easily be found among the curiosities…in exchange for a little money and—at the specific request of Leland Gaunt—a whole lot of menace against their fellow neighbors. Everyone in town seems willing to make a deal at Needful Things, but the devil is in the details. And no one takes heed of the little sign hanging on the wall: Caveat emptor. In other words, let the buyer beware…
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78) You Know They Got a Hell of a Band – 1992
Book Summary: Clark and Mary Willingham are a couple traveling through Oregon. Clark is being transferred out of state, so they opt to take a more scenic route. The two plan to visit Toketee Falls, and Clark insists on taking a road through the deep forest despite Mary’s fears of becoming lost. While Mary takes a nap, Clark does indeed become increasingly lost on a narrow stretch of road. He is forced to admit to Mary that he’s given up hope of finding Toketee Falls and that, furthermore, he had rejected an opportunity to turn around. Frustrated, yet hesitant to push the issue, Mary agrees to press forward in the hopes of reaching a point where they can safely turn around.The couple abruptly comes upon a sign announcing, “Welcome to Rock and Roll Heaven, Ore.” The road becomes wider and paved, giving them another chance to turn around. Again, Clark refuses, arguing that it would be easier and safer to do so inside the town itself. They discover Rock and Roll Heaven is a small town with a 1950s theme, described as looking identical to a Norman Rockwell painting. Mary feels worried about the too-perfect town, but Clark becomes irritated and the two argue. As the two explore the town, Clark insists on entering a local diner. Afraid of being left alone, she follows.Inside the diner, they see that the town is inhabited by dead musicians. After a waitress named CeCe Pryor attempts to warn them off, Clark slips out, but Mary is confronted by two dead musicians. At first cordial and friendly, one begins to bleed from his eyes and another vomits hundreds of maggots, revealing that they’ve simply been playing with her. Clark and Mary drive frantically through the town, chased by dead music legends. As they drive, Mary notices other citizens of Rock and Roll Heaven, all of whom look exhausted and apathetic; she realizes that these are the “true” inhabitants, lured in and trapped in the town. Mary and Clark think they have escaped but are easily captured in the outskirts of town after hitting a psychedelic bus. A police car bearing the mayor (a deceased Elvis Presley) and the chief of police pulls up. The musicians ominously reveal that they couldn’t have escaped, as the road out is surrounded by swamp, quicksand, bears, and “other things”.As the sun begins to set over Rock and Roll Heaven, Mary and Clark join the ranks of the other imprisoned souls in the park, where the concert is prepared. Mary looks at the other exhausted townsfolk, and chooses to sit next to the waitress from the diner. The young woman has the glazed look of one who is stoned, and talks with the couple. She tells them that her name is Sissy, and reveals that one of her fingers was cut off by Frankie Lymon as punishment for assisting the pair. She also explains that while the concerts must end at midnight, “time is different” in Rock and Roll Heaven; the songs sometimes go on for years. The disc jockey Alan Freed takes the stage and begins to announce an endless series of legendary rock stars. Mary voices her worst fear when she asks Sissy her age; she is twenty-three, and has been that way for seven years. Mary realizes that these are the people who get “lost in the woods” and didn’t do anything wrong to deserve this, as Freed continues to scream the names of musicians. He finally shouts: “Rock and roll will never die!”, to which Mary thinks the last line of the story: “That’s what I’m afraid of. That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
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79) Chattery Teeth – 1992
Book Summary: Stephen King’s unparalleled imagination is in full force in this collection of four unabridged short stories originally found in the classic, Nightmares & Dreamscapes. An all-star cast of readers bring to life these timeless stories from the darkest places.A pair of metal teeth in a convenience store may prove to be more than a novelty in Chattery Teeth. In My Pretty Pony, an elderly man on his deathbed warns his young grandson against the dangers of letting time slip away. A music exec learns that his dream job may lead him to a dark and murderous past in Sneakers. And in Dedication, a maid working in a hotel uses black magic in the hopes of benefitting her unborn son.Kathy Bates, Jerry Garcia, Daniel Cronenberg and Lindsay Crouse lend their voices to this haunting collection of classic stories that no Stephen King fan should be without.
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80) Gerald’s Game – 1992
Book Summary: Master storyteller Stephen King presents this classic, terrifying #1 New York Times bestseller. When a game of seduction between a husband and wife ends in death, the nightmare has only begun…“And now the voice which spoke belonged to no one but herself. Oh my God, it said. Oh my God, I am all alone out here. I am all alone.”Once again, Jessie Burlingame has been talked into submitting to her husband Gerald’s kinky sex games—something that she’s frankly had enough of, and they never held much charm for her to begin with. So much for a “romantic getaway” at their secluded summer home. After Jessie is handcuffed to the bedposts—and Gerald crosses a line with his wife—the day ends with deadly consequences. Now Jessie is utterly trapped in an isolated lakeside house that has become her prison—and comes face-to-face with her deepest, darkest fears and memories. Her only company is that of the various voices filling her mind…as well as the shadows of nightfall that may conceal an imagined or very real threat right there with her…
- Book Reviews:
81) Dolores Claiborne – 1992
Book Summary: Now available for the first time in a mass-market premium paperback edition—master storyteller Stephen King presents the classic #1 New York Times bestseller about a housekeeper with a long-hidden secret from her past…one that tests her own will to survive.“Everything I did, I did for love…”When Vera Donovan, one of the wealthiest and most ill-natured residents of Maine’s Little Tall Island, dies suddenly in her home, suspicion is immediately cast on her housekeeper and caretaker, Dolores Claiborne. Dolores herself is no stranger to such mistrust, thanks to the local chatter and mysterious circumstances surrounding her abusive husband’s death twenty-nine years earlier. But if this is truly to be the day of Dolores Claiborne’s reckoning, she has a few things of her own that she’d like to get off her chest…and begins to confess a spirited, intimate, and harrowing tale of the darkest secrest hidden within her hardscrabble existence, revealing above all one woman’s unwavering determination to weather the storm of her life with grace and protect the one she loves, no matter what the cost….
- Book Reviews:
82) Popsy – 1993
Book Summary: Sheridan, a gambling addict, has taken to abducting children for a man known as Mr. Wizard in order to pay off his enormous debts to a mobster who has threatened Sheridan with grievous bodily harm; Wizard has told Sheridan only that the children go “on a boat ride” (implicitly for human trafficking overseas), and Sheridan wants no further information. While lurking in a mall parking lot in his modified van, Sheridan spots his newest probable target of opportunity – a child standing near the entrance, obviously separated from his parents and distressed. Sheridan approaches him, convincing him that he has seen the child’s Popsy (as the boy calls him).After luring him into the van, Sheridan handcuffs him and drives off to make his delivery. On his way to the drop-off point, the boy shows unusual strength, biting Sheridan hard enough to leave two deep marks on his hand, as well as nearly ripping out the steel bar he is handcuffed to. In addition to these demonstrations of strength, the boy makes odd comments about his Popsy, such as his ability to find him and his ability to fly. By the time they are nearing their destination, night has fallen, and Sheridan sees an odd shape swoop by. The boy claims this is his Popsy, and although Sheridan doesn’t immediately believe it, he becomes nervous. Moments later, a wing covers the windshield and the door is ripped off, revealing a horrific, bat-like creature which slits Sheridan’s throat and feeds the blood to the child.
- Book Reviews:
83) Umney’s Last Case – 1993
Book Summary: The story begins as a Raymond Chandler pastiche, and follows a private investigator named Clyde Umney as he goes about what he thinks is just another morning in 1930s Los Angeles. He soon discovers that his life as he knows it is falling apart. All of his lifelong friends and associates are abruptly departing in one fashion or other, for reasons ranging from winning the lottery to terminal cancer, and many of them express disdain towards Umney in place of farewells. He is brooding alone in his office when he receives his final client: Landry, the crime-fiction author who created him. Having suffered the loss of his wife and child as well as a severe case of shingles, Landry took an overdose of medication and found himself in the world of his creation. He demonstrates that his will is law in this world, and explains to a helpless Umney that he intends to take Umney’s place to live a life of eternal adventure and excitement. Umney is cast into oblivion—or so it seems.Instead, Umney finds himself in the year 1994, occupying the vacated body of his creator. Although he realizes/acknowledges that his previous existence was a sham (and falling apart), he also finds himself equally despising the ugly, bland, and generally inadequate nature of the “real” world. He announces that he has begun to practice the craft of writing so that he might return to his fictional home in order to take back his world and his life, and end Landry’s.
- Book Reviews:
84) The Ten O’Clock People – 1993
Book Summary: Pearson, a Boston office worker, discovers that people of authority, including many police officers and political figures, including the Vice President of the United States, are inhuman monsters disguised as people. While on his 10 o’clock smoke break, Pearson perceives the bat-like creatures through their disguises. Noticing his reaction, a young black man named Dudley “Duke” Rhinemann stops him from screaming and calms him down. Dudley explains that if Pearson wants to live, he must go about his day as usual and meet him at 3 o’clock after work. Pearson does as he is told and discovers that his boss is also one of the “batmen”. He leaves work a bit shaken, meets Dudley and goes to a bar with him. Dudley explains that a unique chemical imbalance caused by nicotine withdrawal is the only way to see the creatures and invites Pearson to a resistance meeting.Shortly after arriving, the leader of the group says he has “big news” for them all. Pearson realizes the man is stalling for time and gives warning. The treacherous leader says the batmen have granted them amnesty, but a horde of them attack those in the meeting. Many die. Pearson, along with two others, escapes the meeting. The trio flee to Omaha and form a new resistance group of Ten O’Clock People. This group successfully kills many “batmen”, and Pearson notes that their war against the batmen was a lot like quitting smoking: “…you have to start somewhere.”
- Book Reviews:
85) The House on Maple Street – 1993
Book Summary: Stephen King’s unparalleled imagination is in full force in this collection of four unabridged short stories originally found in the classic, Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Stephen King and an all-star cast of readers bring to life these timeless stories from the darkest places.Mysterious machinery begins to take over The House on Maple Street. A private detective finds out that he is merely the character in crime novel in Umney’s Last Case. In the non-fiction piece Head Down, King chronicles the 1989 season of his son Owen’s little league baseball team and their journey to the Maine State Championships. And as a companion to Head Down, Brooklyn August takes a nostalgic look back on the glory days of professional baseball.Stephen King, Tabitha King, Robert Parker, and Stephen J. Gould lend their voices to this haunting collection of classic stories that no Stephen King fan should be without.
- Book Reviews:
86) Nightmares and Dreamscapes – 1993
Book Summary: The classic short story collection from #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King.A wrong turn on a lonely road lands a wayward couple in Rock and Roll Heaven, Oregon, where there’s no escaping the free nightly concert….A novelty toy becomes an unexpected and terrifying instrument of self-defense….An ex-con pieces together a map to unearth a stolen million dollars—but at what price?…A private investigator in Depression-era Los Angeles is finding his life unraveling as he discovers the shocking truth of who he really is….A third-grade teacher is willing to dig deep in order to exact revenge for his murdered wife…. These are just some of the haunting scenarios to be found in this classic collection—spellbinding tales from the darkest places and the unparalleled imagination of fiction’s master storyteller.
- Book Reviews:
87) Insomnia – 1994 (New York Times Best Seller Book of Stephen King)
Book Summary: A #1 national bestseller—“A yarn so packed with suspense, romance, literary reference, fascinating miscellaneous knowledge, and heart that only Stephen King could have written it. Marvelous—that is, full of marvels” (Booklist).Since his wife died, Ralph Roberts has been having trouble sleeping. Each night he wakes up a bit earlier, until he’s barely sleeping at all. During his late night walks, he observes some strange things going on in Derry, Maine. He sees colored ribbons streaming from people’s heads, two strange little men wandering around town after dark, and more. He begins to suspect that these visions are something more than hallucinations brought on by lack of sleep.There’s a definite mean streak running through this small New England city; underneath its ordinary surface awesome and terrifying forces are at work. The dying has been going on in Derry for a long, long time. Now Ralph is part of it…and lack of sleep is the least of his worries.Returning to the same Maine town where It took place, a town that has haunted Stephen King for decades, Insomnia blends King’s trademark bone-chilling realism with supernatural terror to create yet another masterpiece of suspense.
- Book Reviews:
88) The Man in the Black Suit – 1994
Book Summary: “The face of the man in the black suit grows ever clearer, ever closer, and I remember every word he said. I don’t want to think of him, but I can’t help it, and sometimes at night my old heart beats so hard and so fast I think it will tear itself right clear of my chest.”A haunting recollection of a mysterious boyhood event, The Man in the Black Suit, read by John Cullum, leads off this masterful collection from Stephen King.Other dark tales include: All That You Love Will Be Carried Away, read by Peter Gerety, in which a man checks into a Lincoln, Nebraska Motel 6 to find the meaning in his life; That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French, read by Becky Ann Baker, presents the ultimate case of deja vu; and The Death of Jack Hamilton, read by Arliss Howard, a blistering tale of Depression-era outlaws on the run.Whether writing about encounters with the dead or the near-dead, or about the mundane dreads of life, Stephen King’s The Man in the Black Suit is a gripping, intense listen.
- Book Reviews:
89) Rose Madder – 1995
Book Summary: In 1985, Rose Daniels’ husband, Norman, beats her while she is four months pregnant, causing her to miscarry. Rose considers leaving Norman but dismisses the idea: Norman is a policeman, and is excellent at finding people. He also has a violent temper and has been recently accused of assaulting and raping a black woman named Wendy Yarrow. The subsequent lawsuit and internal affairs investigation has made him even more volatile.Nine years later, Rose is making the bed. She sees a drop of blood on the sheet that dripped from her nose the night before, when Norman had punched her in the face for spilling iced tea on him. Rose realizes that she has passively suffered through Norman’s abuse for fourteen years and that if she continues to put up with it, he will eventually kill her. Rose departs on a bus with their bank card. Once Norman realizes that Rose is gone, he resolves to hunt her down and kill her.Rose arrives in a Midwestern city, disoriented and afraid. At the bus station, she meets a man named Peter Slowik, who guides her to a local women’s shelter. She quickly makes several friends and, with the help of shelter director Anna Stevenson, gets an apartment and a job as a hotel housekeeper. When Rose tries to pawn her engagement ring, she takes a liking to a painting of a woman in a rose madder gown. She trades her ring for the painting, which has no signature. Bill Steiner, the owner of the pawnshop, asks her for a date. Rose falls in love with him, but she is afraid to begin a new relationship.Rose discovers that the painting seems to change from time to time. Eventually she is able to travel through it. On the other side, she encounters a woman called Dorcas, who resembles Wendy Yarrow. She also sees the woman in the painting, whom she calls “Rose Madder” because of her gown and her evident madness. Rose Madder asks Rose to rescue her baby from an underground labyrinth inhabited by a blind, one-eyed bull called Erinyes who orients by his sense of smell.Dorcas leads Rose to the edge of the temple grounds. Dorcas cannot enter the labyrinth, as she is afflicted by the same mysterious illness as her mistress, and Erinyes would be able to smell her. Before Rose parts from Dorcas, she is made to strip naked and rip her nightgown into several strips. One is soaked in Dorcas’ blood and tied around a rock. Rose enters the temple, where she manages to save the child, escape Erinyes, and return the baby girl to Rose Madder, who promises to repay her. Rose returns to her world and puts the strange incident at the back of her mind.Norman arrives in the city, attacks some of Rose’s friends from the shelter, and then goes to Rose’s apartment. He kills a policemen assigned to protect her, poses as one of them in the patrol car, and sees Rose and Bill returning from the police station. He attacks them, almost strangling Bill, but Rose is able to fight him off because she believes she is wearing the golden arm circlet Rose Madder had given her. After injuring Norman, Rose carries Bill to the apartment, where she sees the circlet on her table and realizes she has been fighting Norman alone the whole time.Rose tricks Norman into following her into the painting, then leads him to Rose Madder, who kills him. Rose returns to her world with instructions from Rose Madder to “remember the tree”. She eventually marries Bill and has a daughter, but finds that the violent rages that characterized both Norman and Rose Madder have begun to spring up within her. She remembers that Rose Madder allowed her to take some seeds home with her, which she plants along with Norman’s police ring in a secret grove by her favorite lake. The seed grows into a beautiful but deadly tree. She revisits the tree periodically as it grows, and is able to release her rage and go on with her life.
- Book Reviews:
90) Luckey Quarter – 1995
Book Summary: Darlene Pullen, who is a struggling single mother with two children (a rebellious teenage daughter and a sickly young son) and a lousy job as a maid, is left a tip of a single quarter with a note saying that it is a “lucky quarter”. She takes a quick gamble on it and finds that it brings her some small luck. Moving on to a real casino, she keeps trying her luck, and soon she’s winning thousands of dollars. All seems to be going exceedingly well until she suddenly reappears back in the hotel room, left with nothing but her lucky quarter. All of her success was a fantasy. As her two children come to visit her at work, she lets her son have the quarter, and as he uses it in a gamble, it starts to pay off just as it did when Darlene was fantasizing.
- Book Reviews:
91) Desperation – 1996 (New York Times Best Seller Book of Stephen King)
Book Summary: “The terror is relentless” (Publishers Weekly) in Stephen King’s #1 national bestseller about a little mining town, Desperation, that many will enter on their way to somewhere else. But getting out is not easy as it would seem…Located off a desolate stretch of Interstate 50, Desperation, Nevada, has few connections with the rest of the world. It is a place, though, where the seams between worlds are thin. And it is a place where several travelers are abducted by Collie Entragian, the maniacal police officer of Desperation. Entragian uses various ploys for the abductions, from an arrest for drug possession to “rescuing” a family from a nonexistent gunman. There’s something very wrong here, all right, and Entragian is only the surface of it.The secrets embedded in Desperation’s landscape, and the evil that infects the town like some viral hot zone, are both awesome and terrifying. But as one of the travelers, young David Carver, seems to know—though it scares him nearly to death to realize it—so are the forces summoned to combat them. “Stephen King’s knack for turning the stray junk of pop culture into sick, darkly engrossing thrills has rarely been this much in evidence as in Desperation” (Salon).
- Book Reviews:
92) The Green Mile – 1996
Book Summary: Welcome to Cold Mountain Penitentiary, home to the Depression-worn men of E Block. Convicted killers all, each awaits his turn to walk “the Green Mile,” the lime-colored linoleum corridor leading to a final meeting with Old Sparky, Cold Mountain’s electric chair. Prison guard Paul Edgecombe has seen his share of oddities over the years working the Mile, but he’s never seen anything like John Coffey—a man with the body of a giant and the mind of a child, condemned for a crime terrifying in its violence and shocking in its depravity. And in this place of ultimate retribution, Edgecombe is about to discover the terrible, wondrous truth about John Coffey—a truth that will challenge his most cherished beliefs…
- Book Reviews:
93) The Regulators – 1996
Book Summary: On a perfect summer afternoon in Wentworth, Ohio, many of the citizens who live on Poplar Street are killed mysteriously, and at the center of the mystery is a young boy named Seth Garon, whose supernatural powers are just awakening. 1,250,000 first printing. Lit Guild, Doubleday, & Mystery Guild Main.
- Book Reviews:
94) Everything’s Eventual – 1997
Book Summary: Everything’s Eventual is a collection of 14 short stories by American writer Stephen King, published in 2002.
95) Autopsy Room Four – 1997
Book Summary: Howard Cottrell awakes from some form of unconsciousness to find himself laid out in an autopsy room. As the doctors prepare to begin, Howard struggles to come to grips with what is happening.After realizing that he isn’t dead, Howard deduces that he is in a paralysed state. Howard tries to somehow inform the doctors of this fact before they cut into him.While prepping Cottrell’s body, the doctor in charge, Katie Arlen, finds shrapnel wounds around his nether regions. While she is absent-mindedly examining these, another doctor rushes into the room to inform them that Howard is still alive. Katie looks down – to find herself holding Howard’s erect penis.In a humorous afternote, Howard explains that he was possibly bitten by a very rare snake, causing the deathlike paralysis. Another one of the doctors discovered that same snake in his golf bag and was promptly bitten. It’s presumed that he will recover. Howard adds that he and Katie dated for a while, but parted due to an embarrassing issue in the boudoir (he was impotent unless she was wearing rubber gloves).
- Book Reviews:
96) Six Stories – 1997
Book Summary: Number 1 bestselling writer Stephen King introduces and presents six gripping and chilling stories in this captivating anthology:Stephen King discovered these stories when he judged a competition run by Hodder & Stoughton and the Guardian to celebrate publication of his own collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. He was so impressed with the entries that he recommended they were published together in one book.Reader beware: the stories will make you think twice before cuddling up to your old soft toy, dipping your toe into the water or counting the spots on a leopard…
- Book Reviews:
97) Lunch at the Gotham Café – 1997
Book Summary: Two stories from Stephen King’s bestselling collection BLOOD AND SMOKE, now available for the first time on CD ‘Mike Enslin hadn’t been sure until now, in spite of all the backing and filling; now he was. Olin was really afraid of room 1408, and of what might happen to Mike there tonight…Olin, the good host, reached for Mike’s bag. Allow me. I’m fine with it, Mike said. Nothing but a change of clothes and a toothbrush. Are you sure? Yes, Mike said. I’m already wearing my lucky Hawaiian shirt. He smiled. It’s the one with the ghost repellent. Olin didn’t smile back. He sighed instead, a little round man in a dark cutaway coat anda neatly knotted tie. Very good, Mr Enslin. Follow me.’
- Book Reviews:
98) L. T.’s Theory of Pets – 1997
Book Summary: L.T. has a theory about pets, particularly his Siamese cat. It had been their cat not just his cat, but that was until he came home one day to find a note on the fridge from his wife saying she had left him.From this simple beginning, Stephen King spins a tale as compelling as anything he’s written, and on this audio he reveals himself as as a gifted live performer as well. Recorded at the Royal Festival Hall in London, LT’s Theory of Pets is unique: a story not available in book form being read to an audience who will never forget the night they sat enthralled by the world’s master storyteller.
- Book Reviews:
99) The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass – 1997
Book Summary: Please do not hesitate to contact us for any inquiry. Money back guarantee for every item in our inventory. Your order will be delivered in 2-10 business days. We will provide tracking information. If you order a used book, it may or may not have companion materials. Thank you for your interest.
- Book Reviews:
100) The Little Sisters of Eluria – 1998
Book Summary: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” With these unforgettable words, millions of readers were introduced to Stephen King’s iconic character Roland Deschain of Gilead. Roland is the last of his kind, a “gunslinger” charged with protecting whatever goodness and light remains in his world—a world that “moved on,” as they say. In this desolate reality—a dangerous land filled with ancient technology and deadly magic, and yet one that mirrors our own in frightening ways—Roland is on a spellbinding and soul-shattering quest to locate and somehow save the mystical nexus of all worlds, all universes: the Dark Tower.Now, in the graphic novel series adaptation Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, originally published by Marvel Comics in single-issue form and creatively overseen by Stephen King himself, the full story of Roland’s troubled past and ongoing saga is revealed. Sumptuously drawn by Richard Isanove, Sean Phillips, Luke Ross, and Michael Lark, plotted by longtime Stephen King expert Robin Furth, and scripted by New York Times bestselling author Peter David, The Gunslinger adaptation is an extraordinary and terrifying journey—ultimately serving as the perfect introduction for new readers to Stephen King’s modern literary classic The Dark Tower, while giving longtime fans thrilling adventures transformed from his blockbuster novels.Now near death following a vicious attack by the Slow Mutants, Roland Deschain is taken in by a group of nuns who specialize in anything but the healing arts. These hideous, corpse-like creatures—the Little Sisters of Eluria—have murder on their twisted minds. And in his current condition, there’s almost nothing that the last gunslinger can do to prevent their tender mercies from taking hold….
- Book Reviews:
101) Legends – 1998
Book Summary: Acclaimed writer and editor Robert Silverberg gathered eleven of the finest writers in Fantasy to contribute to this collection of short novels. Each of the writers was asked to write a new story based on one of his or her most famous series: from Stephen King’s opening piece set in his popular Gunslinger universe to Robert Jordan’s early look at his famed Wheel of Time saga, these stories are exceptionally well written and universally well told. The authors include King, Jordan, and Silverberg himself, as well as Terry and Lyn Pratchett, Terry Goodkind, Orson Scott Card, Ursula K. Le Guin, Tad Williams, George R.R. Martin, Anne McCaffrey, and Raymond E. Feist.
- Book Reviews:
102) That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French – 1998
Book Summary: As the story progresses, a woman (Carol) begins to have déjà vu of the same car ride on their second honeymoon with the same bloody outcome every time. It never ends. It is implied, but never said, that they have crashed on the plane to their honeymoon location and they may be in Hell or Purgatory.
- Book Reviews:
103) Bag of Bones – 1998
Book Summary: The narrator, Mike Noonan, a bestselling novelist, suffers severe writer’s block after his pregnant wife Jo suddenly dies of an aneurysm. Four years later, Mike, still grieving, is plagued by nightmares set at his summer house in TR-90 (an unincorporated town named for its map coordinates), Maine. He decides to confront his fears and moves to his vacation house on Dark Score Lake, known as Sara Laughs.On his first day, he meets Kyra, a 3-year-old girl and her young widowed mother, 20-year-old Mattie Devore. Mattie’s father-in-law is Max Devore, an elderly rich man who will do anything to gain custody of his granddaughter, Kyra. Drawn to Kyra and Mattie, Mike hires John Storrow, a custody lawyer, for Mattie, and things start looking up. Mike begins to write again, and realizes that Jo’s ghost is helping him to solve the mystery of Sara Tidwell, a blues singer whose ghost haunts the house. He also learns that Jo frequently returned to the town in the year before her death, without telling him.Mike begins having recurring, disturbing dreams and visions, and realizes he shares a psychic connection with Kyra. Max and his personal assistant, Rogette, try to drown Mike but he survives with the help of his wife’s spirit. Max unexpectedly commits suicide that same night. Mike sees a pattern when he sees that local inhabitants have names that begin with “K” or “C” and learns how relatives of townspeople have drowned in childhood.While Storrow and the private detective he hired are celebrating the end of the custody battle, Mattie attempts to seduce Mike. As they are embracing, Mattie’s trailer is subjected to a drive-by shooting, injuring Storrow and the detective and killing Mattie. The detective is able to kill the driver and incapacitate the shooter with Mike’s help. Mike then grabs Kyra and drives back to his home. The shooter’s buddies try to stop them, but refuse to follow him to Sara Laughs. Under the influence of Sara’s ghost, Mike is tormented to drown Kyra and commit suicide himself. Jo’s ghost prevents him and calls his attention to the novel he has begun to write. In the pages there are clues that lead Mike to discover documents Jo had hidden, among them a genealogy showing Mike’s blood relationship to one of the town families.Several families whose origin lay within the town had firstborn children with “K” names who were all murdered—Kyra, as a descendant of Max Devore, is scheduled to be the next to die. The genealogy also shows that Mike and Jo’s child would have been the next firstborn child with a “K” name in the family line. Mike realizes this must be Sara Tidwell’s curse for something that had been done to her. He leaves and searches for Sara’s grave, stopped by the ghosts of several members of the old families. He learns in a vision that these men had viciously raped and killed Sara, and drowned her son Kito in the lake; all the “K” children who died were descendants of those men. Mike reaches Sara’s grave and succeeds in destroying her bones, ending the curse.Upon returning to the house, Mike discovers that Rogette has kidnapped Kyra. He follows them to the lake, where Mattie’s ghost appears and knocks Rogette into the water. Rogette tries to pull Mike in with her, but is impaled by wreckage from the dock. Mattie’s ghost says her goodbyes to Mike and Kyra.The novel ends with an epilogue, revealing that Mike has retired from writing and is attempting to adopt Kyra. His status as a single, unrelated male complicates things, and the adoption has taken longer than anticipated. The outcome of the adoption is left unresolved at the end, but the reader is given hope that it will be positive.
- Book Reviews:
104) Storm of the Century – 1999
Book Summary: #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King presents an original screenplay and major television event set in Maine’s remote Little Tall Island.They’re calling it the Storm of the Century, and it’s coming hard. The residents of Little Tall Island have seen their share of nasty Maine Nor’easters, but this one is different. Not only is it packing hurricane-force winds and up to five feet of snow, it’s bringing something worse. Something even the islanders have never seen before. Something no one wants to see.Just as the first flakes begin to fall, Martha Clarendon, one of Little Tall Island’s oldest residents, suffers an unspeakably violent death. While her blood dries, Andre Linoge, the man responsible sits calmly in Martha’s easy chair holding his cane topped with a silver wolf’s head…waiting.Linoge knows the townsfolk will come to arrest him. He will let them. For he has come to the island for one reason. And when he meets Constable Mike Anderson, his beautiful wife and child, and the rest of Little Tall’s tight-knit community, this stranger will make one simple proposition to them all:“If you give me what I want, I’ll go away.”
- Book Reviews:
105) The Road Virus Heads North – 1999
Book Summary: The Road Virus Heads North tracks an author who buys a creepy painting at a yard sale which was painted by a metal-head neighbor just before he committed suicide.
- Book Reviews:
106) The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon – 1999 (New York Times Best Seller Book of Stephen King)
Book Summary: ADuring a six-mile hike on the Maine-New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Trail, nine-year-old Trisha McFarland quickly tires of the constant bickering between her older brother and her recently divorced mother. But when she wanders off by herself, she becomes lost in a wilderness maze full of peril and terror. As night falls, Trisha has only her ingenuity as a defense against the elements, and only her courage and faith to withstand her mounting fears. For solace she tunes her headphones to broadcasts of Boston Red Sox baseball games and follows the gritty performances of her hero, relief pitcher Tom Gordon. And when the reception begins to fade, Trisha imagines that Tom Gordon is with her—the protector from an enemy who may or may not be imagined…one who s watching her, waiting for her in the dense, dark woods…
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107) Hearts in Atlantis – 1999
Book Summary: Innocence, experience, truth, deceit, loss, and recovery are at the core of these five interconnected, sequential tales—each deeply rooted in the 1960s, and each scarred by the Vietnam War, which continues to cast its shadow over American lives, politics and culture.In Part One, “Low Men in Yellow Coats,” eleven-year-old Bobby Garfield discovers a world of predatory malice in his own neighborhood. He also discovers that adults are sometimes not rescuers but at the heart of the terror.In the title story, a bunch of college kids get hooked on a card game, discover the possibility of protest, and confront their own collective heart of darkness, where laughter may be no more than the thinly disguised cry of the beast.In “Blind Willie” and “Why We’re in Vietnam,” two men who grew up with Bobby in suburban Connecticut try to fill the emptiness of the post-Vietnam era in an America which sometimes seems as hollow—and as haunted—as their own lives.And in “Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling,” this remarkable book’s denouement, Bobby returns to his hometown where one final secret, the hope of redemption, and his heart’s desire may await him.Full of danger and suspense, full of heart, this spellbinding fiction will take some readers to a place they have never been…and others to a place they have never been able to completely forget. Nearly twenty years after its first publication, Hearts in Atlantis is powerful and astonishingly current.“You will see Stephen King in a new light. Read this moving, heartfelt tragedy and weep—weep for our lost conscience.” —BookPage
- Book Reviews:
108) Stephen King Omnibus – 1999
Book Summary: Two novels in one volume from horror writer Stephen King. The books contained are “Dead Zone” and “Cujo”.
- Book Reviews:
109) 1408 – 1999
Book Summary: Mike Enslin is a writer of non-fiction works based on the theme of haunted places: Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Houses, Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Graveyards, and Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Castles. They prove to be best-sellers, but Enslin feels some guilt at their success, privately acknowledging that he does not believe in the paranormal and supernatural elements he investigates.Arriving at the Dolphin Hotel on 61st Street in New York City, Enslin is intent on spending the night in the hotel’s infamous Room 1408 as part of his research for his next book, Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Hotel Rooms. He is met by the hotel’s manager, Mr. Olin, who fills him in on the room’s morbid history – 1408 has been responsible for 42 deaths, at least 12 of them suicides, over a span of 68 years. While remarking he does not believe there are ghosts in 1408, Olin insists there is “something” that resides inside, causing terrible things to happen to anyone who stays within its walls for anything but the briefest periods of time. As such, he has striven to keep the room vacant during his tenure as manager, a period of nearly 20 years. Olin also reveals that, due to the superstitious practice of never recognizing the 13th floor (the room is listed as being on the 14th), it is a room cursed by existing on the 13th floor, the room numbers adding up to 13 making it all the worse.Enslin is secretly affected by Olin’s remarks and evidence, but his determination to not appear superstitious and follow through with his research wins out. He demands the right stay in the room by threatening legal action against the hotel. Olin pleads with Enslin to reconsider, believing that a skeptic would be highly susceptible to the room’s powers. At Enslin’s continued insistence, Olin reluctantly leads him to 1408, unwilling to accompany him farther than the elevator landing on the 14th floor.Enslin’s problems with Room 1408 begin before he even sets foot through the door; the door itself initially appears to be canted to the left. After looking away and back, the door appears perfectly straight. Then, after looking a third time, it appears to be crooked again, except now to the right. Chalking the experience up to Olin’s attempt to manipulate him, he girds himself and enters the room.Enslin spends 70 minutes in Room 1408, dictating his experience into a handheld tape recorder. Almost immediately, his train of thought takes unwelcome and chaotic turns — he compares it to being “stoned on bad, cheap dope” — and he experiences bizarre visual hallucinations. A breakfast menu on the night-stand changes languages to French, then Russian, then Italian, then a woodcut of a wolf eating a screaming boy’s leg. The patterns on the wallpaper seems to shift and warp, and the room’s pictures transform into grotesque parodies. Enslin feels his feet sink into the carpet like quicksand, and he hears a nightmarish voice on the room’s phone chanting terrifying phrases: “This is nine! Nine! We have killed your friends! Every friend is now dead! This is six! Six!”The room itself begins to melt, the walls and ceiling warping and bowing inward. Enslin senses a dangerous, otherworldly presence coming for him. In desperation, he sets his “lucky” Hawaiian shirt on fire while wearing it, breaking the room’s spell long enough for him to escape. Stumbling out into the hall, another hotel guest douses him with ice. When the other guest looks inside the room and is tempted to enter, Enslin warns him not to, claiming the room is “haunted”. The door slams shut.After his ordeal, Enslin gives up writing altogether. He has acquired various physical and psychological problems stemming from his brief stay in the room. He notes to himself (as Olin expressed earlier) that there are no ghosts in 1408, because ghosts were once merely humans, while the entity he encountered was horrifically inhuman. In the end, Enslin sleeps with his lights on, has removed all his house’s phones, and always draws the curtains before dark; he cannot stand the shade of yellow-orange at sunset that reminds him of the light inside Room 1408.
- Book Reviews:
110) Blood and Smoke – 1999
Book Summary: This collection of short stories from the master of modern fiction is available only as an audiobook. In Blood and Smoke, Stephen King takes us inside a world of yearning and paranoia, isolation and addiction. It is the world of the smoker. In this audio-only collection, the now politically incorrect habit plays a key role in the fates of three different men in three unabridged stories of unfiltered suspense. In Lunch at the Gotham Café, Steve Davis is suffering through intense withdrawal – from both nicotine and his wife. His desperation for a cigarette and for his ex are almost too much to bear, but that’s nothing compared to the horrors that await him at a trendy Manhattan restaurant. In 1408, Mike Enslin, best selling author of “true” ghost stories, decides to spend the night in New York City’s most haunted hotel room. But he must live to write about it without the help of his ex best-friends, his trusty smokes. And in In the Deathroom, a man named Fletcher is held captive in a Central American stronghold. His captors will use any torturous means necessary to extract the information they want from him. His only hope lies with his last request – one last cigarette, please.Features the tale 1408, now a Dimension Films motion picture starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson.
- Book Reviews:
111) On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft – 2000
Book Summary: Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, this special edition of Stephen King’s critically lauded, million-copy bestseller shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work.“Long live the King” hailed Entertainment Weekly upon publication of Stephen King’s On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King’s advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported, near-fatal accident in 1999—and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it—fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.
- Book Reviews:
112) Riding the Bullet – 2000
Book Summary: From international bestseller Stephen King the first ebook ever published—a novella about a young man who hitches a ride with a driver from the other side.Riding the Bullet is “a ghost story in the grand manner” from the bestselling author of Bag of Bones, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and The Green Mile—a short story about a young man who hitches a ride with a driver from the other side.
- Book Reviews:
113) A Volte Ritornano – 2000
Book Summary: “Nei miei racconti incontrerete esseri notturni di ogni genere: vampiri, amanti dei demoni, una cosa che vive nell’armadio, ogni sorta di altri terrori. Nessuno di essi è reale. L’essere che, sotto il letto, aspetta di afferrarmi la caviglia non è reale.Lo so. E so anche che se sto bene attento a tenere i piedi sotto le coperte, non riuscirà mai ad afferrarmi la caviglia.” L’intento di Stephen King in questi venti racconti è chiaro: parlare di paura, di come si arriva all’orlo della follia… e forse al di là del baratro.
- Book Reviews:
114) Secret Windows – 2000
Book Summary: By horror-meister Stephen King. Introduction by Peter Straub. ISBN 0-965-006439. Comprised by non-fiction & fiction pieces specially compiled by BOMC– hard-to-find, little-known interviews, short stories and articles about writing for those looking for direction on how to find their own “windows”, or for anyone wishing to be touched by Stephen King’s humor and wisdom.
- Book Reviews:
115) Dreamcatcher – 2001
Book Summary: From master storyteller Stephen King comes his classic #1 New York Times bestseller about four friends who encounter evil in the Maine woods.Twenty-five years ago, in their haunted hometown of Derry, Maine, four boys bravely stood together and saved a mentally challenged child from vicious local bullies. It was something that fundamentally changed them, in ways they could never begin to understand. These lifelong friends—now with separate lives and separate problems—make it a point to reunite every year for a hunting trip deep in the snowy Maine woods. This time, though, chaos erupts when a stranger suddenly stumbles into their camp, freezing, deliriously mumbling about lights in the sky. And all too quickly, the four companions are plunged into a horrifying struggle for survival with an otherworldly threat and the forces that oppose it…where their only chance of survival is locked into their shared past—and the extraordinary element that bonds them all…
- Book Reviews:
116) Black House – 2001
Book Summary: Twenty years ago, a boy named Jack Sawyer traveled to a parallel universe called the Territories to save his mother and her Territories “Twinner” from an agonizing death that would have brought cataclysm to the other world. Now Jack is a retired Los Angeles homicide detective living in the nearly nonexistent hamlet of Tamarack, Wisconsin. He has no recollection of his adventures in the Territories, and was compelled to leave the police force when an odd, happenstance event threatened to awaken those memories.When a series of gruesome murders occur in western Wisconsin that are reminiscent of those committed several decades ago by a madman named Albert Fish, the killer is dubbed “the Fishman,” and Jack’s buddy, the local chief of police, begs Jack to help the inexperienced force find him. But are these new killings merely the work of a disturbed individual, or has a mysterious and malignant force been unleashed in this quiet town? What causes Jack’s inexplicable waking dreams—if that is what they are—of robins’ eggs and red feathers? It’s almost as if someone is trying to tell him something. As this cryptic message becomes increasingly impossible to ignore, Jack is drawn back to the Territories and to his own hidden past, where he may find the soul-strength to enter a terrifying house at the end of a deserted tract of forest, there to encounter the obscene and ferocious evils sheltered within it.
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117) The Death of Jack Hamilton – 2001
Book Summary: The story is written in first-person. Homer Van Meter, a member of John Dillinger’s gang, tells of the slow, painful death of fellow gang member Jack Hamilton. Van Meter begins by describing Dillinger’s death outside the Biograph Theater at the hands of FBI Agent Melvin Purvis’ men, as well as addressing the theory that it wasn’t actually Dillinger who was killed.Van Meter debunks the theories, citing the fact that the causes for arguments happened during his witnessing the death of Jack Hamilton. During his getaway from a shootout at the Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin, Hamilton is shot by police. The bullet lodged in his lung eventually creates a gruesome case of gangrene. Hamilton is refused treatment by Joseph Moran, so Van Meter and Dillinger take Hamilton to stay at the home of Volney Davis and his girlfriend “Rabbits”, two members of Ma Barker’s gang, as well as Ma’s son Arthur. King’s narrator spares no detail, as the man lapses into dementia before expiring.
- Book Reviews:
118) The WaveDancer Benefit – 2002
Book Summary: On February 2, 2002, Stephen King, Pat Conroy, John Grisham, and Peter Straub gathered at New York’s Town Hall for a very special evening. These four best selling authors stepped up to the microphone to raise money for one of the most recognizable voices in audiobooks, Frank Muller, an actor who sustained terrible injuries from a motorcycle accident. Muller, who has recorded hundreds of novels, including many by these authors, may never work again.This once-in-a-lifetime event is captured here, and 100% of all profits will be donated to The Wavedancer Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports Frank Muller and other artists who fall prey to illness or injury and can no longer perform.Grisham kicks off the evening with a heartfelt reading of an excerpt from his blockbuster best seller The Summons. He’s followed by Straub who captivates the audience with a hair-raising episode from Black House, the latest thriller he co-authored with Stephen King. King changes pace with a joyful reading of his classic short story The Revenge of Lardass Hogan. Finally, Conroy engages the audience in a hilarious chat on the art of writing.A unique program that pays tribute to a true master craftsman, this audiobook is an unforgettable listening experience.
- Book Reviews:
119) From a Buick 8 – 2002 (New York Times Best Seller Book of Stephen King)
Book Summary: The #1 New York Times bestseller from Stephen King—a novel about the fascination deadly things have for us and about our insistence on answers when there are none…Since 1979, the state police of Troop D in rural Pennsylvania have kept a secret in the shed out behind the barracks. Ennis Rafferty and Curtis Wilcox had answered a strange call just down the road and came back with an abandoned 1953 Buick Roadmaster. Curt Wilcox knew old cars, and this one was…just wrong. As it turned out, the Buick 8 was worse than dangerous—and the members of Troop D decided that it would be better if the public never found out about it. Now, more than twenty years later, Curt’s son Ned starts hanging around the barracks and is allowed into the Troop D family. And one day he discovers the family secret—a mystery that begins to stir once more, not only in the minds and hearts of these veteran troopers, but out in the shed as well, for there’s more power under the hood than anyone can handle….
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120) The Things They Left Behind – 2003
Book Summary: New York Times bestsellers and thriller legends John Farris and Stephen King each provided a brand-new, never-before-published tale for this unique collection of stories edited by New York Times bestselling author and mystery legend Ed McBain.The Ransome Women by John Farris: A psychological thriller that questions the role beauty plays in society and the cult of celebrity. A young and beautiful, starving artist catches a break when her idol, the reclusive portraitist John Ransome offers her a lucrative modeling contract. But how long will her excitement last when she discovers the fate shared by all Ransome’s past subjects?The Things They Left Behind by Stephen King: A hauntingly moving tale of survival guilt in New York City after 9/11. Scott Staley called in sick for his job at the World Trade Center that Tuesday morning. Now in the aftermath of 9/11, he must face his guilty conscience as he begins to find the things his deceased coworkers left behind.
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121) Harvey’s Dream – 2003
Book Summary: Harvey’s Dream was first published in the June, 2003 edition of The New Yorker. It was later included in the 2008 short story collection Just After Sunset.
- Book Reviews:
122) The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla – 2003
Book Summary: Wolves of the Calla is the highly anticipated fifth book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series—a unique bestselling epic fantasy quest inspired many years ago by The Lord of the Rings.Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, the Dark Tower series is unlike anything you have ever read. Here is the fifth installment.
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123) The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah – 2004
Book Summary: The penultimate volume in the Dark Tower series, The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah, a #1 New York Times bestseller, is a pivotal installment in the epic saga.Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, the Dark Tower series is unlike anything you have ever read. Here is the penultimate installment.
- Book Reviews:
124) The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower – 2004
Book Summary: Creating “true narrative magic” (The Washington Post) at every revelatory turn, Stephen King surpasses all expectation in the stunning final volume of his seven-part epic masterwork. Entwining stories and worlds from a vast and complex canvas, here is the conclusion readers have long awaited—breathtakingly imaginative, boldly visionary, and wholly entertaining.Roland Deschain and his ka-tet have journeyed together and apart, scattered far and wide across multilayered worlds of wheres and whens. The destinies of Roland, Susannah, Jake, Father Callahan, Oy, and Eddie are bound in the Dark Tower itself, which now pulls them ever closer to their own endings and beginnings…and into a maelstrom of emotion, violence, and discovery.
- Book Reviews:
125) The Colorado Kid – 2005
Book Summary: On an island off the coast of Maine, a man is found dead. There’s no identification on the body. Only the dogged work of a pair of local newspapermen and a graduate student in forensics turns up any clues.
But that’s just the beginning of the mystery. Because the more they learn about the man and the baffling circumstances of his death, the less they understand. Was it an impossible crime? Or something stranger still…?
No one but Stephen King could tell this story about the darkness at the heart of the unknown and our compulsion to investigate the unexplained. With echoes of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and the work of Graham Greene, one of the world’s great storytellers presents a surprising tale that explores the nature of mystery itself…
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126) Lisey’s Story – 2006
Book Summary: The “haunting…tender, intimate book that makes an epic interior journey” (The New York Times), Lisey’s Story is a literary masterpiece—an extraordinarily moving and haunting portrait of a marriage and its aftermath.Lisey lost her husband Scott two years ago, after a twenty-five year marriage of profound and sometimes frightening intimacy. Scott was an award-winning, bestselling novelist and a very complicated man. Early in their relationship, before they married, Lisey knew there was a place Scott went—a place that both terrified and healed him, could eat him alive or give him the ideas he needed in order to live. Now it’s Lisey’s turn to face Scott’s demons, to go to that terrifying place known as Boo’ya Moon. What begins as a widow’s effort to sort through the papers of her celebrated husband becomes a nearly fatal journey into the darkness he inhabited.“Intricate…Exhilirating” (The New Yorker), perhaps Stephen King’s most personal and powerful novel ever, Lisey’s Story is about the wellsprings of creativity, the temptations of madness, and the secret language of love. It is a beautiful, “rich portrait of a marriage, and the complicated affection that outlives death” (The Washington Post).
- Book Reviews:
127) Cell – 2006
Book Summary: The next call you take could be your last in this terrifying #1 New York Times bestseller by Stephen King—now a major motion picture starring Samuel L. Jackson and John Cusack.“If any of them looks over here, sees us, and decides to come after us, we’re done. We won’t have a hope in hell.”On October 1, God is in His heaven, the stock market stands at 10,140, most of the planes are on time, and graphic artist Clayton Riddell is visiting Boston, having just landed a deal that might finally enable him to make art instead of teaching it. But all those good feelings about the future change in a hurry thanks to a devastating phenomenon that will come to be known as The Pulse. The delivery method is a cell phone—everyone’s cell phone. Now Clay and the few desperate survivors who join him suddenly find themselves in the pitch-black night of civilization’s darkest age, surrounded by chaos, carnage, and a relentless human horde that has been reduced to its basest nature…and then begins to evolve. There’s really no escaping this nightmare. But for Clay, an arrow points the way home to his family in Maine, and as he and his fellow refugees make their harrowing journey north, they begin to see the crude signs confirming their direction. A promise of a safe haven, perhaps, or quite possibly the deadliest trap of all….
- Book Reviews:
128) Ayana – 2007
Book Summary: A man recounts his father’s battle with pancreatic cancer in 1982, culminating in the intervention of a blind seven-year-old girl named Ayana. After being kissed by the mysterious child, “Doc” Gentry makes a miraculous recovery from the brink of death, and the narrator discovers that his own part in the working of miracles is only beginning.
- Book Reviews:
129) Blaze – 2007
Book Summary: Master storyteller Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) presents this gripping and remarkable New York Times bestselling crime novel about a damaged young man who embarks on an ill-advised kidnapping plot—a work as taut and riveting as anything he has ever written.Once upon a time, a fellow named Richard Bachman wrote Blaze on an Olivetti typewriter, then turned the machine over to Stephen King, who used it to write Carrie. Bachman died in 1985 (“cancer of the pseudonym”), but this last gripping Bachman novel resurfaced after being hidden away for decades—an unforgettable crime story tinged with sadness and suspense.Clayton Blaisdell, Jr., was always a small-time delinquent. None too bright either, thanks to the beatings he got as a kid. Then Blaze met George Rackley, a seasoned pro with a hundred cons and one big idea. The kidnapping should go off without a hitch, with George as the brains behind their dangerous scheme. But there’s only one problem: by the time the deal goes down, Blaze’s partner in crime is dead. Or is he?
- Book Reviews:
130) The Gingerbread Girl – 2007
Book Summary: In the emotional aftermath of her baby’s sudden death, Em starts running. Soon she runs from her husband, to the airport, down to the Florida Gulf, and out to the loneliest stretch of Vermillion Key, where her father has offered the use of a conch shack he has kept there for years. Em keeps up her running – barefoot on the beach, sneakers on the road – and sees virtually no one.This is doing her all kinds of good, until one day she makes the mistake of looking into the driveway of a man named Pickering. Pickering also enjoys the privacy of Vermillion Key, but the young women he brings there suffer the consequences. Will Em be next?
- Book Reviews:
131) Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse – 2008
Book Summary: An anthology of post-apocalyptic short fiction from some of the biggest names in science fiction and speculative fiction – including Stephen King, George R. R. Martin and Orson Scott CardFamine, Death, War, and Pestilence: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon – these are our guides through the Wastelands . . . From the Book of Revelations to The Road Warrior; from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity.Gathering together the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today’s most renowned authors of speculative fiction, including George R.R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King, Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon.
- Book Reviews:
132) Duma Key – 2008 (New York Times Best Seller Book of Stephen King)
Book Summary: Don’t miss the thrilling novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King about what happens when the barrier between our world and that of the supernatural is breached…No more than a dark pencil line on a blank page. A horizon line, maybe. But also a slot for blackness to pour through…A terrible construction site accident takes Edgar Freemantle’s right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. A marriage that produced two lovely daughters suddenly ends, and Edgar begins to wish he hadn’t survived the injuries that could have killed him. He wants out. His psychologist, Dr. Kamen, suggests a “geographic cure,” a new life distant from the Twin Cities and the building business Edgar grew from scratch. And Kamen suggests something else.“Edgar, does anything make you happy?”“I used to sketch.”“Take it up again. You need hedges…hedges against the night.”Edgar leaves Minnesota for a rented house on Duma Key, a stunningly beautiful, eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico and the tidal rattling of shells on the beach call out to him, and Edgar draws. A visit from Ilse, the daughter he dotes on, starts his movement out of solitude. He meets a kindred spirit in Wireman, a man reluctant to reveal his own wounds, and then Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman whose roots are tangled deep in Duma Key. Now Edgar paints, sometimes feverishly, his exploding talent both a wonder and a weapon. Many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth’s past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating.The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory, and the nature of the supernatural—Stephen King gives us yet another novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying.
- Book Reviews:
133) A Very Tight Place – 2008
Book Summary: Thinking that he is meeting for a resolution of an on-going legal dispute, Curtis Johnson is lured to a deserted construction site by his neighbor, Tim Grunwald, whose electric fences caused the death of Johnson’s beloved dog Betsy. The meeting does not go as either Johnson or Grunwald had hoped.
- Book Reviews:
134) Just After Sunset – 2008
Book Summary: With stories that have appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy, and McSweeney’s, this classic collection displays the phenomenally broad readership of #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King.Just After Sunset—call it dusk, call it twilight, it’s a time when human intercourse takes on an unnatural cast, when nothing is quite as it appears, when the imagination begins to reach for the shadows as they dissipate to darkness and living daylight can be scared right out of you. It’s the perfect time for Stephen King.Who but Stephen King would turn a Port-O-San into a slimy birth canal, or a roadside honky-tonk into a place for endless love? A book salesman with a grievance might pick up a mute hitchhiker, not knowing the silent man in the passenger seat listens altogether too well. Or an exercise routine on a stationary bicycle, begun to reduce bad cholesterol, might take its rider on a captivating—and then terrifying—journey. Set on a remote key in Florida, “The Gingerbread Girl” is a riveting tale featuring a young woman born vulnerable and resourceful. In “Ayana,” a blind girl works a miracle with a kiss and the touch of her hand.For King, the line between the living and the dead is often blurry, and the seams that hold our reality intact might tear apart at any moment. In one of the longer stories here, “N.,” a psychiatric patient’s irrational thinking might create an apocalyptic threat in the Maine countryside…or keep the world from falling victim to it.
- Book Reviews:
135) Stephen King Goes to the Movies – 2009
Book Summary: Stephen King Goes to the Movies is a short-story collection by Stephen King, first published on January 20, 2009. It contains five previously collected pieces of short fiction that have been adapted into films, each with a new introduction by the author.
- Book Reviews:
136) Sorry, Right Number – 2009
Book Summary: For the first time on CD! Vintage Stephen King at a great low price!Stephen King’s unparalleled imagination is in full force in this collection of four short stories originally found in the classic, Nightmares & Dreamscapes. An all-star cast of readers bring to life these timeless stories from the darkest places.A mysterious phone call ends in death in Sorry, Right Number presented in a full-cast dramatization. A gambling addict trying to pay off his debts gets more than he bargained for in Popsy. Nicotine withdrawal leads to horrifying consequences in The Ten O’Clock People. And Stephen King puts his mark on a timeless Hindu fable in The Beggar and the Diamond, and also offers rare insights into the creation of the entire collection in a special afterword his own distinctive voice.Joe Mantegna, Joe Morton, Domenic Custern and others lend their voices to this haunting collection of classic stories that no Stephen King fan should be without.
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137) Under the Dome – 2009
Book Summary: Don’t miss the “harrowing” (The Washington Post) #1 New York Times bestselling thriller from Master of Horror Stephen King that inspired the hit television series, following the apocalyptic scenario of a town cut off from the rest of the world.On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when—or if—it will go away.Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens—town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing—even murder—to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.
- Book Reviews:
138) A Good Marriage – 2010
Book Summary: Now a major motion picture, Stephen King’s brilliant and terrifying story of a marriage with truly deadly secrets.Darcy Anderson’s husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his routine business trips when the unsuspecting Darcy looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a hidden box under a worktable and in it she discovers a trove of horrific evidence that her husband is two men—one, the benign father of her children, the other, a raging rapist and murderer. It’s a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends “A Good Marriage.”This story was originally published in Stephen King’s acclaimed collection, Full Dark, No Stars.
- Book Reviews:
139) 1922 – 2010
Book Summary: The chilling novella featured in Stephen King’s New York Times bestselling collection Full Dark, No Stars, 1922 is about a man who succumbs to the violence within—setting in motion a grisly train of murder and madness.Wilfred James owns eighty acres of farmland in Nebraska that have been in his family for generations. His wife, Arlette, owns an adjoining one hundred acres. She wants to sell her land but if she does, Wilfred will be forced to sell as well. James will do anything to hold onto his farm, and he’ll get his son to go along.Betrayal, murder, madness, rats, 1922 is a breathtaking exploration into the dark side of human nature from the great American storyteller Stephen King.
- Book Reviews:
140) Big Driver – 2010
Book Summary: Now a Lifetime original movie, Stephen King’s haunting story about an author of a series of mystery novels who tries to reconcile her old life with her life after a horrific attack and the one thing that can save her: Revenge.Tess Thorne, a famous mystery writer, faces a long drive home following a book signing engagement. Advised to take a shortcut at the suggestion of the event’s planner, Tess sets out for home, well after dark. On a lonely stretch of New England road, her tire blows out, and when a man in a pick up stops, it is not to help her, but to repeatedly assault her and leave her for dead. Tess survives, and she plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself, capable of gruesome violence.This story was originally published in Stephen King’s acclaimed collection, Full Dark, No Stars.
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141) Fair Extension – 2010
Book Summary: “I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger . . .” writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up “1922,” the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness.In “Big Driver,” a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself.”Fair Extension,” the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment.When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband. It’s a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends a good marriage.Like Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight, which generated such enduring films as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, Full Dark, No Stars proves Stephen King a master of the long story form.
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142) Blockade Billy – 2010
Book Summary: Even the most die-hard baseball fans don’t know the true story of William “Blockade Billy” Blakely. He may have been the greatest player the game has ever seen, but today no one remembers his name. He was the first–and only–player to have his existence completely removed from the record books. Even his team is long forgotten, barely a footnote in the game’s history.Every effort was made to erase any evidence that William Blakely played professional baseball, and with good reason. Blockade Billy had a secret darker than any pill or injection that might cause a scandal in sports today. His secret was much, much worse… and only Stephen King, the most gifted storyteller of our age, can reveal the truth to the world, once and for all.Originally published through Cemetery Dance Publications on April 20, 2010 as a $25.00 limited-edition hardcover, Stephen King and Cemetery Dance have made an arrangement with Scribner to make available a less expensive hardcover edition of Blockade Billy, with an on-sale date of May 25th, the same date the audiobook goes on sale. The Scribner edition will be available in all U.S. and Canadian retail outlets. Both the Scribner book and the Simon & Schuster audiobook will feature a bonus short story (“Morality”).
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143) Full Dark, No Stars – 2010
Book Summary: This 384-page hardcover collects four novellas about revenge and other traits that most of us strive hard to keep tightly locked. In “Big Driver,” a vicious attack on the way home from a book club fest leaves a cozy writer with an insatiable thirst for blood. In another story, Darcy Anderson’s “good marriage” loudly collapses with a startling late night discovery in the garage. Another novella charts Dave Streeter’s devil deal cancer reprieve, while “1922” rekindles the sudden onslaught of Midwest murder and madness. Trademark Stephen King.
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144) Mile 81 – 2011
Book Summary: With the heart of Stand By Me and the genius horror of Christine, Mile 81 is Stephen King unleashing his imagination as he drives past one of those road signs…At Mile 81 on the Maine Turnpike is a boarded up rest stop on a highway in Maine. It’s a place where high school kids drink and get into the kind of trouble high school kids have always gotten into. It’s the place where Pete Simmons goes when his older brother, who’s supposed to be looking out for him, heads off to the gravel pit to play “paratroopers over the side.” Pete, armed only with the magnifying glass he got for his tenth birthday, finds a discarded bottle of vodka in the boarded up burger shack and drinks enough to pass out.Not much later, a mud-covered station wagon (which is strange because there hadn’t been any rain in New England for over a week) veers into the Mile 81 rest area, ignoring the sign that says “closed, no services.” The driver’s door opens but nobody gets out.Doug Clayton, an insurance man from Bangor, is driving his Prius to a conference in Portland. On the backseat are his briefcase and suitcase and in the passenger bucket is a King James Bible, what Doug calls “the ultimate insurance manual,” but it isn’t going to save Doug when he decides to be the Good Samaritan and help the guy in the broken down wagon. He pulls up behind it, puts on his four-ways, and then notices that the wagon has no plates.Ten minutes later, Julianne Vernon, pulling a horse trailer, spots the Prius and the wagon, and pulls over. Julianne finds Doug Clayton’s cracked cell phone near the wagon door — and gets too close herself. By the time Pete Simmons wakes up from his vodka nap, there are a half a dozen cars at the Mile 81 rest stop. Two kids — Rachel and Blake Lussier — and one horse named Deedee are the only living left. Unless you maybe count the wagon.
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145) 11/22/63 – 2011
Book Summary: ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963, THREE SHOTS RANG OUT IN DALLAS, PRESIDENT KENNEDY DIED, AND THE WORLD CHANGED. WHAT IF YOU COULD CHANGE IT BACK?In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King—who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer—takes readers on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.It begins with Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away—a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than fifty years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer. Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life—like Harry’s, like America’s in 1963—turning on a dime. Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination.So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in a different world of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there’s Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading eventually, of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore. Time-travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying.
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146) Stephen King : Carrie – Salem’s Lot – the Shining – 2012
Book Summary: Stephen King is a unique and powerful writer without equal for millions of horror fans. His incredible narrative drive ensnares the reader in a web of everyday surroundings, believable situations and recognizable characters that are eventually caught up in a terrifying noose of monumental evil. Three of King’s earlier classics are here together in one volume, complete and unabridged and chilling: the explosive adolescent powers of Carried; the slow, insidious corruption of a small American town by a terrorizing vampire; and the malicious machinations of the Overlook Hotel and the gift of the “shine.”
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147) The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole – 2012
Book Summary: In this story (within a story), a boy named Tim Ross lives with his mother Nell in a forgotten village that fears the annual collection of property taxes by a man named The Covenant Man. Tim recently lost his father, who was said to have been killed by a dragon while in the woods chopping trees. After the death of his father, Nell, no longer able to pay the taxes to keep their home, marries his father’s best friend and business partner Bern Kells, who moves in with them. Kells is a mean man, prone to heavy drinking, who begins to abuse both Tim and Nell. One day The Covenant Man comes to collect the taxes, and he secretly tells Tim to meet him later in the woods. During this meeting, The Covenant Man reveals to Tim that it was actually Kells who killed his father, not a dragon, and with help of a scrying bowl shows Kells beating his mother, causing her to go blind. Later, The Covenant Man sends Tim a vision telling him that if Tim again visits The Covenant Man in the woods, he will give Tim magic that will allow his mother to see again. Tim, armed with a gun given to him by his school teacher, journeys into the dangerous woods, and is led into a swamp by the mischievous fairy, Armaneeta. Here, Tim almost becomes victim to a dragon and other mysterious swamp creatures, but he is saved by his gun as well as a group of friendly swamp people, who mistake him for a gunslinger. The swamp people guide him to the far side of the swamp, and equip him with a small mechanical talking device from the ‘Old People’ that helps guide him on his journey. Eventually, Tim arrives at a Dogan where he finds a caged ‘tyger’, which wears the key to the Dogan around its neck. A starkblast approaches, and Tim, realizing this is likely a trap set for him by The Covenant Man, befriends the tyger. Tim and the tyger ride out the storm under a magical protective blanket. The next morning, Tim discovers that the tyger is actually Maerlyn, a white magician, who had been trapped in the cage for years due to black magic. Maerlyn gives Tim a potion to cure his mother’s blindness and sends him back to his mother on the flying magic blanket. Returning home, Tim brings sight back to his mother. Tim is attacked by Kells, who had secretly entered the home as Tim tended to his mother, but the boy is saved by his mother, who kills Kells with her late husband’s ax.
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148) In the Tall Grass – 2012
Book Summary: Now a major motion picture streaming on Netflix!Mile 81 meets “N.” in this novella collaboration between Stephen King and Joe Hill.As USA TODAY said of Stephen King’s Mile 81: “Park and scream. Could there be any better place to set a horror story than an abandoned rest stop?” In the Tall Grass begins with a sister and brother who pull off to the side of the road after hearing a young boy crying for help from beyond the tall grass. Within minutes they are disoriented, in deeper than seems possible, and they’ve lost one another. The boy’s cries are more and more desperate. What follows is a terrifying, entertaining, and masterfully told tale, as only Stephen King and Joe Hill can deliver.
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149) A Face in the Crowd – 2012
Book Summary: The writing team that delivered the bestselling Faithful, about the 2004 Red Sox championship season, takes readers to the ballpark again, and to a world beyond, in an eBook original to be published on August 21, 2012.Dean Evers, an elderly widower, sits in front of the television with nothing better to do than waste his leftover evenings watching baseball. It’s Rays/Mariners, and David Price is breezing through the line-up. Suddenly, in a seat a few rows up beyond the batter, Evers sees the face of someone from decades past, someone who shouldn’t be at the ballgame, shouldn’t be on the planet. And so begins a parade of people from Evers’s past, all of them occupying that seat behind home plate. Until one day Dean Evers sees someone even eerier….
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150) Joyland – 2013
Book Summary: A STUNNING NEW NOVEL FROM ONE OF THE BEST-SELLING AUTHORS OF ALL TIME!The #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever.“I love crime, I love mysteries, and I love ghosts. That combo made Hard Case Crime the perfect venue for this book, which is one of my favorites. I also loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid, and for that reason, we’re going to hold off on e-publishing this one for the time being. Joyland will be coming out in paperback, and folks who want to read it will have to buy the actual book.” – Stephen King
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151) Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All – 2013
Book Summary: In 1992, a cadre of the world’s best selling authors formed a garage band called the Rock Bottom Remainders. For two decades the band played proudly (and terribly) to sold-out crowds across the country and raised more than $2 million dollars for charity. Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All is a collective book by Stephen King, Scott Turow, Mitch Albom, Amy Tan, Matt Groening, Dave Barry, Roy Blount Jr., James McBride, Ridley Pearson, Greg Iles, Ted Habte-Gabr, Sam Barry, and Roger McGuinn. These renowned authors share the behind-the-scenes, uncensored story of their two decades of friendship, love, writing, and the redemptive power of rock’n’roll. Includes stories, musings, group email exchanges, candid conversations, compromising photographs, and a writing contest in which several of the authors (including Stephen King) wrote a short story in King’s style. Readers get to guess which is the real thing
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152) The Dark Man – 2013
Book Summary: Stephen King first wrote about the Dark Man in college after he envisioned a faceless man in cowboy boots and jeans and a denim jacket forever walking the roads. Later this dark man would come to be known around the world as one of King’s greatest villains, Randall Flagg, but at the time King only had simple questions on his mind: where was this man going? What had he seen and done? What terrible things…?i have ridden rails…More than forty years after Stephen King first wrote his breathtaking poem The Dark Man, Glenn Chadbourne set out to answer those questions in this World’s First Edition hardcover featuring more than 70 full-page illustrations from the talented artist behind The Secretary of Dreams.i have slept in glaring swamps…This Cemetery Dance Publications hardcover is a true marriage of words and art, with Chadbourne pulling the images from King’s imagination and illustrating them in magnificent detail. This incredible blending of King’s words with Chadbourne’s art creates a unique page turning experience you can return to again and again, always finding new details hidden on every page. You’ll discover hidden layers and mysterious secrets for years to come.i am a dark man…So who is the Dark Man and why is he traveling the country? The answers are terrifying….
153) Doctor Sleep – 2013 (New York Times Best Seller Book of Stephen King)
Book Summary: Following the events of The Shining, after receiving a settlement from the owners of the Overlook Hotel, Danny Torrance remains psychologically traumatized as his mother Wendy slowly recovers from her injuries. Angry ghosts from the Overlook, including the woman from Room 217, still want to find Danny and eventually consume his phenomenal “shining” power. Dick Hallorann, the Overlook’s chef, teaches Danny to create lockboxes in his mind to contain the ghosts, including that of former Overlook owner Horace Derwent.As an adult, Danny (now going by Dan) takes up his father’s legacy of anger and alcoholism. Dan spends years drifting across the United States, but he eventually makes his way to New Hampshire and decides to give up drinking. He settles in the small town of Frazier, working first at a tourist attraction and then at a hospice, and attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. His psychic abilities, long suppressed by his drinking, re-emerge and allow him to provide comfort to dying patients. Aided by a cat, “Azzie,” that can sense when someone is about to die, Dan acquires the nickname “Doctor Sleep.”In the meantime, Abra Stone, a baby girl born in 2001, begins to manifest psychic powers of her own when she seemingly predicts the 9/11 attacks. She slowly and unintentionally establishes a telepathic bond with Dan. As she grows, the contact becomes more conscious and voluntary, and her shining grows stronger than even his. One night, Abra psychically witnesses the ritual torture and murder of a boy by the True Knot, a group of quasi-immortal psychic vampires, many of which possess their own “shine” abilities. The True Knot members wander across the United States and periodically feed on “steam,” a psychic essence produced when the people who possess the shining die in pain. The True Knot’s leader, Rose the Hat, becomes aware of Abra’s existence and formulates a plan to kidnap Abra and keep her alive, making her produce a limitless supply of steam.The True Knot begin to die off from measles contracted from their last victim, a little boy named Bradley Trevor; they believe that Abra’s steam can cure them. Abra asks for Dan’s help, and he reveals his connection with Abra to her father David and their family doctor, John Dalton. Angry and skeptical at first, David starts to believe Dan and agrees to go along with his plan to save Abra. With the help of Billy Freeman, one of Dan’s friends, they foil and kill a raiding party sent by Rose, led by Rose’s lover Crow Daddy. However, Dan realizes that Rose will relentlessly hunt Abra for revenge. He visits Abra’s great-grandmother Concetta, who is dying of cancer, and telepathically learns from her that he and Abra’s mother Lucy are half-siblings with the same father: Jack Torrance. As Concetta dies, Dan takes her diseased steam into himself. Meanwhile, dissension in the ranks of The True Knot, along with Rose’s obsession with Abra, leads to the group splitting up, leaving Rose with even fewer followers.Following another kidnapping attempt that Abra foils with Dan’s telepathic help, she baits Rose into confronting her at the location where the Overlook Hotel once stood in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, now home to a campsite owned by the True Knot. Dan and Billy travel to the site while Abra helps them by using her astral projection. Lying in wait, Dan releases the steam collected from Concetta to the remaining group of True Knot members, killing all of them. He also frees the ghost of Horace Derwent to kill the last member, Silent Sarey, waiting to ambush him and Abra, and the two fight Rose in a long psychic struggle. With help from Billy and the ghost of Dan’s father, Jack Torrance, they push Rose off an observation platform, so she falls to the ground, breaking her neck and dying several moments later. Before leaving the campsite, Dan sees his father wave goodbye, having finally found peace.In the epilogue, Dan celebrates 15 years of sobriety and attends Abra’s 15th birthday party. He tells her about the patterns of alcoholism and violent behavior that run in his family and warns her not to repeat them by starting to drink or submitting to rage. Abra agrees that she will behave, but before they can finish the conversation, Dan is called back to his hospice, where he comforts a dying colleague who had antagonized him in the past.
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154) Doctor Sleep – 2013
Book Summary: Soon to be a major motion picture starring Ewan McGregor!‘By the end of this book your fingers will be mere stubs of their former selves . . . King’s inventiveness and skill show no signs of slacking: Doctor Sleep has all the virtues of his best work’ – Margaret Atwood, New York TimesAn epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted readers of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.****************Following a childhood haunted by terrifying events at the Overlook Hotel, Danny Torrance has been drifting for decades.Finally, he settles into a job at a nursing home where he draws on his remnant ‘shining’ power to help people pass on.Then he meets Abra Stone, a young girl with the brightest ‘shining’ ever seen. But her gift is attracting a tribe of paranormals. They may look harmless, old and devoted to their Recreational Vehicles, but The True Knot live off the ‘steam’ that children like Abra produce.Now Dan must confront his old demons as he battles for Abra’s soul and survival…
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155) Bad Little Kid – 2014
Book Summary: Bad Little Kid is a short horror story by Stephen King, which was originally published in German and French in an electronic version. The first paper print in English was in Kings 2015 short story collection, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams.The story is about a man, George Hallas, whose life is changed forever when he realizes that a mysterious boy is causing the deaths of people he loves. It is told as he is in prison explaining how he ended up there to his attorney, Leonard Bradley.
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156) Under the Dome: Part 2 – 2014
Book Summary: Read the conclusion to Stephen King’s “harrowing, powerful” (The Washington Post) #1 New York Times bestselling novel that inspired the hit CBS television drama…On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when—or if—it will go away.Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens—town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing—even murder—to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.
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157) Mr. Mercedes – 2014
Book Summary: Now an AT&T Audience Original SeriesWINNER OF THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL
#1 New York Times bestseller! In a high-suspense race against time, three of the most unlikely heroes Stephen King has ever created try to stop a lone killer from blowing up thousands. “Mr. Mercedes is a rich, resonant, exceptionally readable accomplishment by a man who can write in whatever genre he chooses” (The Washington Post).In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes.In another part of town, months later, a retired cop named Bill Hodges is still haunted by the unsolved crime. When he gets a crazed letter from someone who self-identifies as the “perk” and threatens an even more diabolical attack, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on preventing another tragedy.Brady Hartsfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again. Only Bill Hodges, with two new, unusual allies, can apprehend the killer before he strikes again. And they have no time to lose, because Brady’s next mission, if it succeeds, will kill or maim thousands.Mr. Mercedes is a war between good and evil, from the master of suspense whose insight into the mind of this obsessed, insane killer is chilling and unforgettable.
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158) That Bus Is Another World – 2014
Book Summary: A man on his way to a potentially career-changing appointment witnesses something that causes a moral dilemma. Should he report what he’s seen and risk missing his appointment or ignore it?
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159) Revival – 2014
Book Summary: A dark and electrifying novel about addiction, fanaticism, and what might exist on the other side of life.In a small New England town, over half a century ago, a shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers. Jamie Morton looks up to see a striking man, the new minister. Charles Jacobs, along with his beautiful wife, will transform the local church. The men and boys are all a bit in love with Mrs. Jacobs; the women and girls feel the same about Reverend Jacobs—including Jamie’s mother and beloved sister, Claire. With Jamie, the Reverend shares a deeper bond based on a secret obsession. When tragedy strikes the Jacobs family, this charismatic preacher curses God, mocks all religious belief, and is banished from the shocked town.Jamie has demons of his own. Wed to his guitar from the age of thirteen, he plays in bands across the country, living the nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock and roll while fleeing from his family’s horrific loss. In his mid-thirties—addicted to heroin, stranded, desperate—Jamie meets Charles Jacobs again, with profound consequences for both men. Their bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil’s devising, and Jamie discovers that revival has many meanings.This rich and disturbing novel spans five decades on its way to the most terrifying conclusion Stephen King has ever written. It’s a masterpiece from King, in the great American tradition of Frank Norris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe.
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160) Different Seasons – 2015
Book Summary: Includes the stories “The Body” and “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”-set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine A “hypnotic” (The New York Times Book Review) collection of four novellas-including the inspirations behind the films Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption-from Stephen King, bound together by the changing of seasons, each taking on the theme of a journey with strikingly different tones and characters. This gripping collection begins with “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” in which an unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge-the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award-nominee The Shawshank Redemption. Next is “Apt Pupil,” the inspiration for the film of the same name about top high school student Todd Bowden and his obsession with the dark and deadly past of an older man in town. In “The Body,” four rambunctious young boys plunge through the façade of a small town and come face-to-face with life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. This novella became the movie Stand By Me. Finally, a disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death in “The Breathing Method.” “The wondrous readability of his work, as well as the instant sense of communication with his characters, are what make Stephen King the consummate storyteller that he is,” hailed the Houston Chronicle about Different Seasons.
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161) Finders Keepers – 2015
Book Summary: The second book in Stephen King’s Bill Hodges trilogy (Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch), an AT&T Audience Original Series, now in its second season!“Stephen King’s superb new stay-up-all-night thriller is a sly tale of literary obsession that recalls the themes of his classic 1987 novel Misery” (The Washington Post)—the #1 New York Times bestseller about the power of storytelling, starring the same trio of unlikely and winning heroes Stephen King introduced in Mr. Mercedes.“Wake up, genius.” So announces deranged fan Morris Bellamy to iconic author John Rothstein, who once created the famous character Jimmy Gold and hasn’t released anything since. Morris is livid, not just because his favorite writer has stopped publishing, but because Jimmy Gold ended up as a sellout. Morris kills his idol and empties his safe of cash, but the real haul is a collection of notebooks containing John Rothstein’s unpublished work…including at least one more Jimmy Gold novel. Morris hides everything away—the money and the manuscripts no one but Gold ever saw—before being locked up for another horrific crime. But upon Morris’s release thirty-five years later, he’s about to discover that teenager Pete Saubers has already found the stolen treasure—and no one but former police detective Bill Hodges, along with his trusted associates Holly Gibney and Jerome Robinson, stands in the way of his vengeance…Not since Misery has Stephen King played with the notion of a reader and murderous obsession, filled with “nail biting suspense that’s the hallmark of [his] best work” (Publishers Weekly).
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162) Drunken Fireworks – 2015
Book Summary: 2016 Audie Award Finalist for Original WorkOnly on audio! A brand-new, never-before-published Stephen King short story unavailable in any other format!Alden McCausland and his mother are what they call “accident rich”; thanks to an unexpected life-insurance policy payout and a winning Big Maine Millions scratcher, Alden and his Ma are able to spend their summers down by Lake Abenaki, idly drinking their days away in a three-room cabin with an old dock and a lick of a beach.Across the lake, they can see what “real rich” looks like: the Massimo family’s Twelve Pines Camp, the big white mansion with guest house and tennis court that Alden’s Ma says is paid for by “ill-gotten gains” courtesy of Massimo Construction. When Alden’s holiday-weekend sparklers and firecrackers set off what over the next few years comes to be known as the 4th of July Arms Race, he learns how far he and the Massimos will go to win an annual neighborly rivalry – one that lands Alden in the Castle County jail.Read by beloved Down East storyteller Tim Sample – praised by Stephen King for his “wit and talent and good-heartedness” – Drunken Fireworks makes for explosive audio listening.
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163) The Bazaar of Bad Dreams – 2015
Book Summary: Magnificent, eerie, utterly compelling, these stories comprise one of King’s finest gifts to his constant reader”I made them especially for you,” says King. “Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth.”
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164) End of Watch – 2016
Book Summary: Now an AT&T Audience Original SeriesThe fabulously suspenseful and “smashing” (The New York Times Book Review) final novel in the Bill Hodges trilogy from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers!For nearly six years, in Room 217 of the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic, Brady Hartsfield has been in a persistent vegetative state. A complete recovery seems unlikely for the insane perpetrator of the “Mercedes Massacre,” in which eight people were killed and many more maimed for life. But behind the vacant stare, Brady is very much awake and aware, having been pumped full of experimental drugs…scheming, biding his time as he trains himself to take full advantage of the deadly new powers that allow him to wreak unimaginable havoc without ever leaving his hospital room. Brady Hartsfield is about to embark on a new reign of terror against thousands of innocents, hell-bent on taking revenge against anyone who crossed his path—with retired police detective Bill Hodges at the very top of that long list….
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165) Hearts in Suspension – 2016
Book Summary: HEARTS IN SUSPENSION includes a substantial essay by Stephen King on his college experience in the late 1960s, when the effort to end the War in Vietnam was at its height. The book also includes Kings novella Hearts in Atlantis (set on the University of Maine campus during Kings college years); four installments of Kings early newspaper column, Kings Garbage Truck; relevant photographs from the period; and twelve personal narratives by classmates and friends who knew Stephen King during his college years and were his fellow student writers and political activists. The collection was edited by poet and King mentor, Jim Bishop.
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166) Charlie the Choo-Choo – 2016
Book Summary: Fans of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower will definitely want this picture book about a train engine and his devoted engineer.Engineer Bob has a secret: His train engine, Charlie the Choo-Choo, is alive…and also his best friend. From celebrated author Beryl Evans and illustrator Ned Dameron comes a story about friendship, loyalty, and hard work.
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167) Gwendy’s Button Box – 2017
Book Summary: Set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, MaineStephen King teams up with long-time friend and award-winning author Richard Chizmar for the first time in this original, chilling novella that revisits the mysterious town of Castle Rock.There are three ways up to Castle View from the town of Castle Rock: Route 117, Pleasant Road, and the Suicide Stairs. Every day in the summer of 1974, twelve-year-old Gwendy Peterson has taken the stairs, which are held by strong—if time-rusted—iron bolts and zig-zag up the precarious cliffside.Then one day when Gwendy gets to the top of Castle View, after catching her breath and hearing the shouts of kids on the playground below, a stranger calls to her. There on a bench in the shade sits a man in black jeans, a black coat, and a white shirt unbuttoned at the top. On his head is a small, neat black hat. The time will come when Gwendy has nightmares about that hat…The little town of Castle Rock, Maine has witnessed some strange events and unusual visitors over the years, but there is one story that has never been told—until now.
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168) Sleeping Beauties – 2017
Book Summary: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERIn this spectacular father/son collaboration, Stephen King and Owen King tell the highest of high-stakes stories: what might happen if women disappeared from the world of men?In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep: they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent. And while they sleep they go to another place, a better place, where harmony prevails and conflict is rare.One woman, the mysterious “Eve Black,” is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Eve a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain? Abandoned, left to their increasingly primal urges, the men divide into warring factions, some wanting to kill Eve, some to save her. Others exploit the chaos to wreak their own vengeance on new enemies. All turn to violence in a suddenly all-male world.Set in a small Appalachian town whose primary employer is a women’s prison, Sleeping Beauties is a wildly provocative, gloriously dramatic father-son collaboration that feels particularly urgent and relevant today.
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169) Graduation Afternoon – 2018
Book Summary: “Graduation Afternoon” is a short story by American writer Stephen King, originally published in the March 2007 issue of Postscripts, and collected in King’s 2008 collection Just After Sunset.[1] The story tells of a young woman enjoying her wealthy boyfriend’s high school graduation party at his suburban Connecticut home when events take an unexpected turn.
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170) Mr. Mercedes Trilogy – 2018
Book Summary: A magnificently packaged boxed set of hardcover editions of Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch, the Edgar award–winning trilogy starring Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, Jerome Robinson, and the diabolical Mercedes Killer, Brady Hartsfield—with unique new jackets and case.
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171) The Outsider – 2018 (New York Times Best Seller Book of Stephen King)
Book Summary: Evil has many faces…maybe even yours in this #1 New York Times bestseller from master storyteller Stephen King.An eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is discovered in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City’s most popular citizens—Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon have DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.As the investigation expands and horrifying details begin to emerge, King’s story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can.
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172) Low Men in Yellow Coats – 2018
Book Summary: “Low Men in Yellow Coats” is a 254-page novella written by Stephen King and published in the short story collection Hearts in Atlantis.
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173) Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: Beginnings Omnibus – 2018
Book Summary: The complete graphic novel prequel series Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: Beginnings—now collected in a beautiful hardcover omnibus.“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” With these unforgettable words, millions of readers were introduced to Stephen King’s iconic character Roland Deschain of Gilead. Roland is the last of his kind, a “gunslinger” charged with protecting whatever goodness and light remains in his world—a world that “moved on,” as they say. In this desolate reality—a dangerous land filled with ancient technology and deadly magic, and yet one that mirrors our own in frightening ways—Roland is on a spellbinding and soul-shattering quest to locate and somehow save the mystical nexus of all worlds, all universes: the Dark Tower.Now, in this graphic novel omnibus collection of five books originally published by Marvel Comics and overseen by Stephen King himself, the untold story of Roland’s past is finally revealed. Sumptuously drawn by Jae Lee and Richard Isanove, plotted by longtime Stephen King expert Robin Furth, and scripted by New York Times bestselling author Peter David, these five prequel graphic novels (The Gunslinger Born; The Long Road Home; Treachery; The Fall of Gilead; The Battle of Jericho Hill) delve in depth into Roland’s origins—ultimately serving as the perfect introduction to Stephen King’s modern literary classic The Dark Tower for new readers, while long-time fans will thrill to adventures merely hinted at in his blockbuster novels.
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174) Elevation – 2018
Book Summary: The latest from legendary master storyteller Stephen King, a riveting, extraordinarily eerie, and moving story about a man whose mysterious affliction brings a small town together—a timely, upbeat tale about finding common ground despite deep-rooted differences.Although Scott Carey doesn’t look any different, he’s been steadily losing weight. There are a couple of other odd things, too. He weighs the same in his clothes and out of them, no matter how heavy they are. Scott doesn’t want to be poked and prodded. He mostly just wants someone else to know, and he trusts Doctor Bob Ellis.In the small town of Castle Rock, the setting of many of King’s most iconic stories, Scott is engaged in a low grade—but escalating—battle with the lesbians next door whose dog regularly drops his business on Scott’s lawn. One of the women is friendly; the other, cold as ice. Both are trying to launch a new restaurant, but the people of Castle Rock want no part of a gay married couple, and the place is in trouble. When Scott finally understands the prejudices they face–including his own—he tries to help. Unlikely alliances, the annual foot race, and the mystery of Scott’s affliction bring out the best in people who have indulged the worst in themselves and others.From Stephen King, our “most precious renewable resource, like Shakespeare in the malleability of his work” (The Guardian), Elevation is an antidote to our divisive culture, as gloriously joyful (with a twinge of deep sadness) as “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
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175) Stephen King Classic Collection: The Shining / Bag of Bones / Christine / Cell. Halloween Editions – 2018
Book Summary: Stephen King Classic Collection 4 Books Box Set Titles in the Set The Shining, Bag of Bones, Christine, Cell
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176) All That You Love Will Be Carried Away – 2019
Book Summary: A morose traveling salesman finds solace by “collecting” odd phrases he finds on motel walls. He believes they may make an interesting study, even a book, but thoughts of suicide prove equally as distracting.Originally issued as part of the short story collection: Everything’s eventual. Prince Frederick, MD : Recorded Books, LLC, p2002
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177) The Institute – 2019
Book Summary: A NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2019 SELECTIONFrom #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King, the most riveting and unforgettable story of kids confronting evil since It.In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King’s gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don’t always win.
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Conclusion
If you are looking for another author, book series or even genre to read next then check out our collection of must reads here.
