Stephen King

"You like it darker? Fine, so do I," writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life--both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King...

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...

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...

A wonderful new store has opened in Castle Rock, Maine. It's a place where you can get anything your heart desires - sexual pleasure, wealth, power ... but for a nerve-shattering price.

"Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, but he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was seven, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it. Charlie starts doing...

Young Pete Simmons just wanted to have some fun and explore when he stumbled onto the old abandoned rest stop at Mile 81 on the Maine turnpike. Instead, he discovers a scene of bloodshed and carnage. A car has pulled into the boarded-up service station, a run-down, muddy station wagon without any plates, and without a driver. As the car claims the lives of one would-be good Samaritan after another, Pete decides that it's up to him to stop the evil...

Two years after losing her husband of twenty-five years, Lisey looks back at the sometimes frightening intimacy that marked their marriage, her husband's successes as a novelist, and his secretive nature that established Lisey's supernatural belief systems.

"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...

"When Billy Summers was twelve years old, He shot and killed his mother's boyfriend after he kicked Billy's sister to death. At 17, he enlisted in the army. At 18, he was a sniper in Iraq and involved in the deadly battle to recapture Fallujah. For nearly twenty years, he's worked as a paid assassin. He's a good guy in a bad job, and he wants out. He takes on a very complicated, very lucrative job that he hopes will be his last. He's got a perfect...

After Flagg, the evil court magician, sees a mouse chance upon a grain of dragon sand behind Prince Peter's shelves and die--as did the king--in fire and smoke, he plots to imprison Peter in the Needle and seize control of the kingdom.