Stephen King's Books

A modern classic, Carrie introduced a distinctive new voice in American fiction -- Stephen King. The story of misunderstood high school girl Carrie White, her extraordinary telekinetic powers, and her violent rampage of revenge, remains one of the most barrier-breaking and shocking novels of all time.

Make a date with terror and live the nightmare that is...Carrie

Stephen King's second novel, Salem's Lot, is the story of a mundane town under siege from the forces of darkness. Considered one of the most terrifying vampire novels ever written, it cunningly probes the shadows of the human heart -- and the insular evils of small-town America.

The Overlook Hotel is more than just a home-away-from-home for the Torrance family. For Jack, Wendy, and their young son, Danny, it is a place where past horrors come to life. And where those gifted with the shining do battle with the darkest evils. Stephen King's classic thriller is one of the most powerfully imagined novels of our time.

Stephen King's most popular book, according to polls of his fans, is an end-of-the-world scenario: a rapidly mutating flu virus is accidentally released from a U.S. military facility and wipes out 99 and 44/100 percent of the world's population, thus setting the stage for an apocalyptic confrontation between Good and Evil.

Arguably the greatest horror novel ever written by the greatest horror novelist, this is a true Modern Classic that was first published in 1978, and then re-published in 1990, complete and unabridged, with 150,000 words cut from the first edition restored, and now accompanied by unusual and imaginative line art. The total copies for both editions, in hardcover and paperback, exceeds 4 million worldwide.

The Stand is a truly terrifying reading experience, and became a four-part mini-series (See right) that memorably brought to life the cast of characters and layers of story from the novel. It is an apocalyptic vision of the world, when a deadly virus runs amok around the globe. But that lethal virus is almost benign compared to the satanic force gathering minions from those still alive to destroy humanity and create a world populated by evil.

This reads as if King were sitting right there with you, shooting the breeze. He starts on October 4, 1957, when he was 10 years old, watching a Saturday matinee of "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers". Just as the saucers were mounting their attack on "Our Nation's Capital," the movie was suddenly turned off. The manager of the theater walked out onto the stage and announced, "The Russians have put a space satellite into orbit around the earth. They call it ... Spootnik." That's how the whole book goes: one simple, yet surprisingly pertinent, anecdote or observation after another. King covers the gamut of horror as he'd experienced it at that point in 1978 (a period of about 30 years): folk tales, literature, radio, good movies, junk movies. It's colorful, funny, and nostalgic--and also strikingly intelligent. From The Library Journal

If any of King's novels exemplifies his skill at portraying the concerns of his generation, it's The Dead Zone (1979). Although it contains a horrific subplot about a serial killer, it isn't strictly a horror novel. It's the story of an unassuming high school teacher, an Everyman, who suffers a gap in time--like a Rip Van Winkle who blacks out during the years 1970-75--and thus becomes acutely conscious of the way that American society is rapidly changing. He wakes up as well with a gap in his brain, the "dead zone" of the title. The zone gives him crippling headaches, but also grants him second sight, a talent he doesn't want and is reluctant to use. The crux of the novel concerns whether he will use that talent to alter the course of history.

The story is about Charlie McGee, the child of Andy and Vicky McGee. In 1968, Andy and Vicky had participated in a drug test just for money. They had made the biggest mistake of their life for when they married and had a baby in the next year, the baby (Charlie) was born with a supernatural power, the ability to start fires when ever she's mad at someone. Anyway, the drug agency (The Shop) hears of this child and wants her to do their work. They kill Vicky and now Andy and Charlie are on the run.

This is the story of an amiable St. Bernard (yes, the breed choice is just right) infected by a brain-destroying virus that makes it into a monster; This horror tale is not supernatural: it's as real as junk food, a failing marriage, a broken-down car, or a fatal virus.

Dr. Louis Creed with his wife Rachel, daughter Ellie, son Gage & their cat, Church, moved from Chicago to Ludlow...Everything seemed to be perfect, from their friendly neighbors, (old guy Jud Crandall and his wife Norma) to Louis' job...Until one day, the family discovers the Pet Sematary, wherein Jud told them that people buried their pets in that place...Ellie, who was barely 6, learned and denied the tragic issue of death...She realized that her most valuable posession, her cat Church, would also die...This issue came to its toll between Louis and Rachel...But it didn't stop there...Later on, Louis would terribly learn about the true tale of Pet Sematary- that if you bury the dead, it could come back to life.

Basically, Christine is about a possessed car. You don't own Christine. She owns you. And now she owns Arnie Cunningham; a shy, geeky kid with a bad complexion. Arnie loves Christine. He'll do anything for her and no one should stand between him and his beloved car. Or else.....

The first (1984) collaboration between horror/fantasy writers King and Straub, this book has been reissued in multiple formats to coincide with the publication of its sequel, Black House. In The Talisman, 12-year-old Jack Sawyer takes on a quest in this and a parallel world, the "Territories," to acquire a mystical talisman that will save the life of his dying mother and her "twinner," the Queen of the Territories. Jack "flips" back and forth between worlds during his journey, finding his way through and past representatives of good and evil in both.

A kingdom is in turmoil as the old king dies and his successor must do battle for the throne. Pitted against an evil wizard and a would-be rival, Prince Peter makes a daring escape and rallies the forces of Good to fight for what is rightfully his. This is a masterpiece of classic dragons-and-magic fantasy that only Stephen King could have written!

They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they were grown-up men and women who had gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them could withstand the force that drew them back to Derry, Maine to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name. What was it? Read It and find out...if you dare!

After an automobile accident, novelist Paul Sheldon meets his biggest fan. She is his nurse-and his captor. Now, she wants Paul to write his greatest work-just for her. She has a lot of ways to spur him on. One is a needle. Another is an ax. And if they don't work, she can get really nasty.

This dark tale depicts a small town's fatal encounter with creatures from outer space. Events start with Roberta Anderson, a writer of Old West novels, unearthing a flying saucer on her remote wooded property. The creatures (Tommyknockers) destroy the citizenry of Haven, Maine. While this is not one of King's more original novels, it does have plenty of blood and guts, macabre humor, and a well-wrought realization of the New England countryside.

The protagonist of King's "top-notch" novel is literary novelist Thad Beaumont, whose greatest success has come with three gory thrillers written under the pseudonym George Stark. Beaumont is threatened by a blackmailer who may reveal Stark's identity; Beaumont kills off Stark instead; and Stark goes on a murderous rampage. "Wondrously frightening . . . among the best of his voluminous work." Publisher's Weekly

Of grand proportion, the novel ranks with King's best, in both plot and characterization. A new store, Needful Things, opens in town, and its proprietor, Leland Gaunt, offers seemingly unbeatable (read: Faustian) bargains to Castle Rock's troubled citizens. Among them are Polly Chalmers, lonely seamstress whose arthritis is only one of the physical and psychic pains she must bear; Brian Rusk, the 11-year-old boy whose mother is not precisely attentive; and Alan Pangborn, the new sheriff whose wife and son have recently died.

The story is a monolog by the title character, who is suspected of murdering her loutish, insensitive husband and the difficult, rich, and senile woman for whom she has kept house for many years. As Dolores tells her story to the local authorities, the details of a life of drudgery and marital unhappiness emerge, along with the ironic truth behind the deaths. This new work is a quietly terrifying tale of desperation, abuse, and revenge that showcases King's talent as a powerful storyteller.

Old Ralph Roberts hasn't been sleeping well lately. Every night he wakes just a little bit earlier, and pretty soon, he thinks, he won't get any sleep at all. It wouldn't be so bad, except for the strange hallucinations he's been having. Or, at least, he hopes they are hallucinations--because here in Derry, one never can tell.

After 14 years of being beaten, Rose Daniels wakes up one morning and leaves her husband -- but she keeps looking over her shoulder, because Norman has the instincts of a predator. And what is the strange work of art that has Rose in a kind of spell? In this brilliant dark-hued fable of the gender wars, Stephen King has fashioned yet another suspense thriller to keep readers right at the edge.

When it first appeared, one volume per month, Stephen King's The Green Mile was an unprecedented publishing triumph: all six volumes ended up on the New York Times bestseller list -- simultaneously -- and delighted millions of fans the world over.

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, keeping a date with "Old Sparky," Cold Mountain's electric chair. Prison guard Paul Edgecombe has seen his share of oddities in his years working the Mile. But he's never seen anyone 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. In this place of ultimate retribution, Edgecombe is about to discover the terrible, wondrous truth about Coffey, a truth that will challenge his most cherished beliefs...and yours.

This novel taps into what Stephen King does best: character-driven storytelling. The setting is the small "death house" of a Southern prison in 1932 and concerns an inmate who has the power to heal by a laying on of hands. As Time magazine put it, "Like the best popular art, The Green Mile has the courage of its cornier convictions ... the palpable sense of King's sheer, unwavering belief in his tale is what makes the novel work as well as it finally does." And it's not a bad choice for giving to someone who doesn't understand the appeal of Stephen King, because the one scene that is out-and-out gruesome can be easily skipped by the squeamish. The Green Mile was nominated for a 1997 Bram Stoker Award and became a motion picture starring Tom Hanks.

The nearly deserted Nevada mining town with an enormous haunted mine pit and an abandoned movie theatre where the survivors hang out makes for a striking battleground, and the grisly action rarely flags. Best of all, though, are the characters of Tak, the ancient body-hopping evil who emerges from the mine, and of "God"--whom the New York Times describes as "the edgiest creation in Desperation. Remote, isolated, ironic, shrouded behind disguises, perhaps 'another legendary shadow,' this deity forms a sly foil, and an icy mirror, to Tak."

The hero muses on his marriage and falls for a young single mom with a marvelous, psychic daughter. There is also good-humored satire of the real bestseller book world--the hero complains that "the publicity process is like going to a sushi bar where you're the sushi." In its deep concerns with love, sprawling families, the writer's life, endangered children, and good old-fashioned storytelling, the book resembles a John Irving novel. It is also absolutely classic Stephen King, packed with nifty turns of phrase, irreverent wit, and lurid ghouls who grab you from beneath the bed while you cower under the covers.

For the first time in Stephen King's remarkable publishing history, the master storyteller presents an all-new, original tale written expressly for the television screen.
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."

Trisha McFarland is a plucky 9-year-old hiking with her brother and mom, who is grimly determined to give the kids a good time on their weekends together. Trisha's mom is recently divorced, and her brother is feuding with her for moving from Boston to small-town Maine, where classmates razz him. Trisha steps off the trail for a pee and a respite from the bickering. And gets lost.Trisha's odyssey succeeds on several levels. King renders her consciousness of increasing peril beautifully, from the "first minnowy flutter of disquiet" in her guts to her into-the-wild tumbles to her descent into hallucinations.

Starting with a mesmerizing account of King's childhood and his early focus on writing, this memoir affords readers a fresh and often funny perspective on the formation of a writer's character. King then discusses the basic tools of a writer's craft and how to sharpen and multiply them through use.

Twenty-five years after saving a Down's-syndrome kid from bullies, Beav, Henry, Pete, and Jonesy -- now men with separate lives and separate problems -- reunite in the woods of Maine for their annual hunting trip. But when a stranger stumbles into their camp, disoriented and mumbling something about lights in the sky, chaos erupts. Soon, the four friends are plunged into a horrifying struggle with a creature from another world where their only chance of survival is locked in their shared past -- and in the Dreamcatcher.

The bestselling sequel to The Talisman is now in paperback. It's been 20 years since Jack Sawyer entered the Territories to save his mother, but he has no memory of those events. Now a retired homicide detective, Jack lives in rural Wisconsin, where a series of gruesome murders draws him back to the Territories. There he must enter a terrifying house and face the evils sheltered in it.

King's villain is one rotten car, a Buick Roadmaster penned up behind the state police barracks that seems to have been responsible for the disappearance of several people. King himself had a near-fatal run-in with an auto shortly after finishing the first draft, an eerie coincidence he addresses in an afterword.

Witness Stephen King's triumphant, blood-spattered return to the genre that made him famous. Cell, the king of horror's homage to zombie films (the book is dedicated in part to George A. Romero) is his goriest, most horrific novel in years, not to mention the most intensely paced. Casting aside his love of elaborate character and town histories and penchant for delayed gratification, King yanks readers off their feet within the first few pages; dragging them into the fray and offering no chance catch their breath until the very last page.

In Cell King taps into readers fears of technological warfare and terrorism. Mobile phones deliver the apocalypse to millions of unsuspecting humans by wiping their brains of any humanity, leaving only aggressive and destructive impulses behind. Those without cell phones, like illustrator Clayton Riddell and his small band of "normies," must fight for survival, and their journey to find Clayton's estranged wife and young son rockets the book toward resolution.

Lisey's husband, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Scott Landon, has been dead for two years at the book's start, but his presence is felt on every page. Lisey hears him so often in her head that when her catatonic sister, Amanda, begins speaking to her with Scott's voice, she finds it not so much unbelievable as inevitable. Soon she's following a trail of clues that lead her to Scott's horrifying childhood and the eerie world called Boo'ya Moon, all while trying to help Amanda and avoid a murderous stalker. Both a metaphor for coming to terms with grief and a self-referencing parable of the writer's craft, this novel answers the question King posed 25 years ago in his tale "The Reach": yes, the dead do love.

Duma Key is the engaging, fascinating story of a man who discovers an incredible talent for painting after a freak accident in which he loses an arm. He moves to a 'new life' in Duma Key, off Florida's West Coast; a deserted strip, part beach, part weed-tangled, owned by a patroness of the arts whose twin sisters went missing in the 1920s. Here Freemantle is inspired to paint the amazing sunsets. But soon the paintings become predictive, even dangerous. Freemantle knows the only way forward is to discover what happened to the twin sisters -- and what is the secret of the strange old lady who holds the key?

Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, The Dark Tower series is King's most visionary feat of storytelling, a magical mix of science fiction, fantasy, and horror that may well be his crowning achievement.

In November 2003, the fifth installment, Wolves of the Calla, will be published under the imprint of Donald M. Grant. Song of Susannah, Book VI, and The Dark Tower, Book VII, will follow under the same arrangement in 2004.

The novel tells the story of Roland of Gilead, the last gunslinger, who is chasing after the mysterious man in black. In his search, Roland comes upon several great characters that help him in his search. The book leaves many questions unanswered that will be dealt with in the later novels of the series. One of the best parts of the story was the conversation between Roland and the man in black as they discuss the origins of man. This is a great story full of excellent characters and beautiful settings that won't allow you to put the book down. For a fantastic introduction to the series, check out The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower, Book 1.

Roland enters three lives in the alternate world of New York City: junkie and drug runner Eddie Dean, schizophrenic heiress Odetta Holmes and serial murderer Jack Mort. If King tells us too little about Roland, he gives us too much about these misfits who are variously healed or punished exactly as expected. Typically, King is much better at the minutiae and sensations of a specific physical world, and several such bravura sequences (from an attack by mutant lobsters to a gun store robbery) are standouts amid the characteristic headlong storytelling.

From School Library Journal YA-- The third installment in the offbeat fantasy saga involving the enigmatic Roland (the last gunfighter) and his quest for the Dark Tower. While the story (inspired by Robert Browning's narrative poem ``Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'') is entertaining, what really makes it outstanding are King's unique, multifaceted characters. This is Stephen King at his best.

The fourth episode in King's white-hot Dark Tower series, is a sci-fi/fantasy novel that contains a post-apocalyptic Western love story twice as long. It begins with the series' star, world-weary Roland, and his world-hopping posse trapped aboard a runaway train. The train is a psychotic multiple personality that intends to commit suicide with them at 800 m.p.h.--unless Roland and pals can outwit it in a riddling contest.

It's a great race, for the mind and pulse. Then comes a 567-page flashback about Roland at age 14. It's a well-marbled but meaty tale. Roland and two teen homies must rescue his first love from the dirty old drooling mayor of a post-apocalyptic cowboy town, thwart a civil war by blowing up oil tanks, and seize an all-seeing crystal ball from Rhea, a vampire witch.

Roland and his posse learn that every 20-odd years the "Wolves" kidnap one child from each set of the Calla's twins, bring them to the Tower and, weeks later, send them back mentally and physically impaired. Meanwhile, back in 1977 New York City (the alternate world of Roland's surrogate son, Jake), bookstore owner Calvin Tower is being threatened by a group of thugs (readers will recognize them from The Drawing of the Three, 1987) to sell them a vacant lot in midtown Manhattan. In the lot stands a rose, or rather the Rose, which is our world's manifestation of the Dark Tower. With the help of the Old Fella (also known to `Salem's Lot readers as Father Callahan), the gunslingers must devise a plan against evil in both worlds. The task, however, is further complicated as Roland and his gang start noticing behavioral changes in wheelchair-bound, recovered schizophrenic Susannah

The next-to-last novel in Stephen King's seven-volume magnum opus, Song of Susannah is at once a book of revelation, a fascinating key to the unfolding mystery of the Dark Tower, and a fast-paced story of double-barreled suspense. To give birth to her "chap," demon-mother Mia has usurped the body of Susannah Dean and used the power of Black Thirteen to transport to New York City in the summer of 1999. Enlisting the aid of Manni senders, the remaining katet climbs to the Doorway Cave...and discovers that magic has its own mind. It falls to the boy, the billy-bumbler, and the fallen priest to find Susannah-Mia, who, in a struggle to cope -- with each other and with an alien environment -- "go todash" to Castle Discordia on the border of End-World. In that forsaken place, Mia reveals her origins, her purpose, and her fierce desire to mother whatever creature the two of them have carried to term. Eddie and Roland, meanwhile, tumble into western Maine in the summer of 1977, a world that should be idyllic but isn't. For one thing, it is real, and the bullets are flying. For another, it is inhabited by the author of a novel called 'Salem's Lot, a writer who turns out to be as shocked by them as they are by him.

Roland's ka-tet remains intact, though scattered over wheres and whens. Susannah-Mia has been carried from the Dixie Pig (in the summer of 1999) to a birthing room -- really a chamber of horrors -- in Thunderclap's Fedic; Jake and Father Callahan, with Oy between them, have entered the restaurant on Lex and Sixty-first with weapons drawn, little knowing how numerous and noxious are their foes. Roland and Eddie are with John Cullum in Maine, in 1977, looking for the site on Turtleback Lane where "walk-ins" have been often seen. They want desperately to get back to the others, to Susannah especially, and yet they have come to realize that the world they need to escape is the only one that matters.
Thus the book opens, like a door to the uttermost reaches of Stephen King's imagination. You've come this far. Come a little farther. Come all the way. The sound you hear may be the slamming of the door behind you. Welcome to The Dark Tower.

RAGE, the first novel, (contained in the book at left that has all four novels) is a quietly creepy tale of a high-school student going insane. In one heated afternoon, he kills his teacher, holds the class hostage, and proceeds to delve into the beginnings of his psychosis. RAGE shows off King's ease at capturing a moment in time, one of those moments that remain in the memory forever. His evocation of a slowly draining mind is as effective here as it was in PET SEMETARY.

Incidently, RAGE is the only novel that King admits he wishes he never wrote. Several similar incidents have occured across the United States, and RAGE has been mentioned in connection with them. Considering how sympathetic King is to his protagonist, it's easy to see how disillusioned teens would come to identify with its themes.

This is a bizarre tale set in a deeply restricted future, with echoes of 1984 and THE HANDMAID'S TALE. Every year in this warped society a contest is held, whereby young men volunteer to walk until they die, the winner receiving 'whatever he desires'. This could be seen as quite prophetic, considering the inanities that were inflicted upon the public recently in the SURVIVOR game show. While RAGE showed the disintigrating mind, THE LONG WALK adds the body to the equation, as the boys literally walk themselves into their graves. It is a grim, depressing story of friendship, hope, and eventual betrayal and madness. It also has parallels to Shirley Jackson's classic story, "The Lottery".

ROADWORKis often cited as King's least work, and it's easy to see why: It is a 'serious' novel about one man's lone fight against the government. It has no real scares, and very little momentum. But King does manage to create another indelible character, and its sad little story is quite effective in parts.

THE RUNNING MAN, adapted into a quite unimpressive Arnold Schwarzenegger film, may be the best story of the lot. It is not complex, or tremedously deep by any regard. But, as King states in his introduction, "It moves". THE RUNNING MAN starts off full speed, and never lets up. It follows one contestant in a game show where the rules are simple: Survive or die.

The movie "The Running Man", although based on the book, comes no where near the same intensity nor even the same plot as the book. The book, like most books against movies, is about 10 times better than the movie.

A small town attorney is living testament to the American Dream's pleasures and excesses, with a great career, loving family, beautiful home--and an extra 50 pounds. But his perfect life has become a living nightmare since crossing a mysterious gypsy's path. For one thing, he no longer has a weight problem. In fact, he may soon have no weight left at all.

There's a place in Wentworth, Ohio, where summer is in full swing. It's called Poplar Street. Up until now it's been a nice place to live. The idling red van around the corner is about to change all that. Let the battle against evil begin. Here come "The Regulators". "Call him Bachman or call him King. . . . He hits hard with a white-knuckler knockout. A devilishly entertaining yarn of occult mayhem and mordant social commentary . . . a paragon of action-horror".--"Publishers Weekly".

The last of the Richard Bachman novels, recently recovered and published for the first time. A fellow named Richard Bachman wrote Blaze in 1973 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 in late 2006 King found the original typescript of Blaze among his papers at the University of Maine's Fogler Library ("How did this get here?!"), and decided that with a little revision it ought to be published.

Blaze is the story of Clayton Blaisdell, Jr. -- of the crimes committed against him and the crimes he commits, including his last, the kidnapping of a baby heir worth millions. Blaze has been a slow thinker since childhood, when his father threw him down the stairs -- and then threw him down again. After escaping an abusive institution for boys when he was a teenager, Blaze hooks up with George, a seasoned criminal who thinks he has all the answers. But then George is killed, and Blaze, though haunted by his partner, is on his own.

This contains "Children of the Corn" about a violently dysfunctinal couple who find themselves in the middle of a Twilight Zone-esque town in Nebraska, "Quitters, Inc." a funny little story about the pains some people go through to quit smoking, and "Graveyard Shift" all of which have been adapted for movies.
All in all, Night Shift is one of the best short story collections ever. Some of these stories are already classics, and are highly recommend. Check out the late great John D. MacDonald's intro. Good stuff.

These are novellas; contains, "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" - "Hope Springs Eternal" - " Apt Pupil: Summer of Corruption" - "The Body: Fall from Innocence" - "The Breathing Method: A Winter's Tale"

Right The only book about the film nominated for 7 Academy Awards, among them Best Picture and Best Screenplay includes a facsimile of writer/director Darabont's shooting script, selected storyboards, over 35 stills, and a wonderful introduction with King's impressions about the adaptation of his short story for film.

The first scream came from the snowbound railwayman who felt the fangs ripping at his throat. The next month there was a scream from the woman attacked in her snug bedroom. No one knows who will be attacked next. But one thing is sure. When the moon grows fat, a paralyzing fear sweeps through Tarker 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.

This novella became the movie Silver Bullet

This second collection contains a superb short novel ("The Mist") that alone is worth the price of admission, plus two forgettable poems and 20 short stories on such themes as an evil toy monkey, a human-eating water slick, a machine that avenges murder, and unnatural creatures that inhabit the thick woods near Castle Rock, Maine. The short tales range from simply enjoyable to surprisingly good.

"The Langoliers," has been made into a TV mini-series and is about rips in time and how it affects unprepared travelers. King's characters rely on their wits and luck to set things right.

"The Library Policeman" shows King's power to seek out fright with any subject at any place.

"Secret Window, Secret Garden," delves into the darker interior of man.

In "The Sun Dog" the supernatural is studied as a boy's birthday camera take very unnatural pictures indeed.

This short story collection features stories of vampires, lurking spirits and ordinary individuals driven to unthinkable extremes by the perversities of fate. The theme, mood, characters, and language vary, but throughout, a sense of story reigns supreme. Nightmares & Dreamscapes contains 20 short tales--including several never before published--plus one teleplay, one poem, and one nonfiction piece about kids and baseball that appeared in the New Yorker. The subjects include vampires, zombies, an evil toy, man-eating frogs, the burial of a Cadillac, a disembodied finger, and a wicked stepfather.

International bestselling author Stephen King is in terrifying top form with his first collection of short stories in almost a decade. In this spine-chilling compilation, King takes readers down a road less traveled (for good reason) in the blockbuster e-Book "Riding the Bullet," bad table service turns bloody when you stop in for "Lunch at the Gotham Café," and terror becomes déjàvu all over again when you get "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French" -- along with eleven more stories that will keep you awake until daybreak. Enter a nightmarish mindscape of unrelenting horror and shocking revelations that could only come from the imagination of the greatest storyteller of our time.