Stephen King: Books Novels * Carrie * 'Salem's Lot * The Shining * The Stand * The Dead Zone * Firestarter * Cujo * The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger * Christine * Pet Sematary * The Talisman (with Peter Straub) * Cycle of the Werewolf * It * The Eyes of the Dragon * Misery * The Tommyknockers * The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three * The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands * The Dark Half * The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition * Needful Things * Gerald's Game * Dolores Claiborne * Insomnia * Rose Madder as Richard Bachman * Rage * The Long Walk * Roadwork * The Running Man * Thinner Collections * Creepshow * Night Shift * Different Seasons * Skeleton Crew * The Bachman Books * Four Past Midnight * Nightmares & Dreamscapes Nonfiction * Danse Macabre * Mid-Life Confidential * Nightmares in the Sky Limited Edition * My Pretty Pony * Dolan's Cadillac * The Plant * The Plant Part II * The Plant Part III The Bachman Books Viking (1985) Now the secret is out - and so are these four spellbinding tales of future shock and suspense, all in one volume. * Rage * The Long Walk * Roadwork * The Running Man Carrie Doubleday (1974) A novel of a girl possessed of a terrifying power. Main Characters: Rita Desjardin the gym teacher who came to Carrie's defense Chris Hargensen plotted the pigs' blood shower as revenge for being punished for the shower incedent with Carrie Billy Nolan Chris Hargensen's boyfriend who rigged the buckets of pigs' blood Tommy Ross Sue Snell's boyfriend. He took Carrie to the prom. He was knocked out when the buckets of pigs' blood fell and died in the fire. Sue Snell one of Carrie's classmates who participated in the shower incident. She later felt bad about what she did and convinced her boyfriend Tommy Ross to take Carrie to the prom. Bad Idea! Carietta (Carrie) White girl with telekentic abilities who snaps when buckets of pigs' blood are dumped on her at the class prom Margaret White Carrie's mother Notes of interest: 1. one of the teachers at Carrie's school is Edwin King and King's full name is Stephen Edwin King 2. Prom Night toll was 440 dead and 18 missing Christine Viking (1983) Christine is no lady, but 17-year-old Arnie Cunningham loves her enough to do _anything_ to possess her. Arnie's best friend Dennis distrusts her at first sight. Arnie's teen-queen girlfriend Leigh fears her the moment she senses her power. Arnie's parents, teachers and enemies soon learn what happens when you cross her. Christine is no lady. She is Stephen King's ultimate, blackly evil vehicle of horror... Main Characters: Leigh Cabot Arnie's girlfriend Christine a red 1958 Plymouth Fury, with a taste for death Arnie Cunningham the nerd who was seduced and destroyed by Christine Will Darnell owned Darnell's Used Auto Parts where Arnie stored and worked on Christine Dennis Guilder Arnie's friend Roland D. LeBay the man who sold Christine to Arnie Creepshow New American Library (1982) Consists of 5 stories comprising a total of 424 individual comic strip panels. * Father's Day * The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill * The Crate * Something to Tide You Over * They're Creeping Up On You Cujo Viking (1981) A big, friendly dog chases a rabbit into a hidden under- ground cave - and stirs a sleeping evil crueler than death itself. A terrified four-year-old boy sees his bedroom closet door swing open untouched by human eands, and screams at the unholy red eyes gleaming in the darkness. The little Maine town of Castle Rock is about to be invaded by the most hideous menace ever to savage the flesh and devour the mind... Major Characters: Joe Chamber the mechanic who owned Cujo. He owned the garage on the outskirts of Castle Rock where Donna and Tad were trapped. Cujo a large St. Bernard who contracted rabies from a bat and attacked the car where Donna and Tad were trapped. Donna Trenton Was trapped in a broken down Pinto along with her son by Cujo. Tad Trenton Donna's son, who thought that Cujo was the monster from his closet out to get him. Vic Trenton Donna's husband. Notes of Interest: 1. Frank Dodd, the Castle Rock Strangler from The Dead Zone, was mentioned in the book, along with John Smith. Cycle of the Werewolf New American Library (1985) TERROR BEGAN IN JANUARY - BY THE LIGHT OF THE FULL MOON... The first scream came from the snowbound railwayman who felt the fangs ripping at his throat. The next month there was a scream of ecstatic agony from the woman attacked in her snug bedroom. Now scenes of unbelieving horror come each time the full moon shines on the isolated Maine town of Tarker Mills. No one knows who will be attacked next. But one thing is for 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... Danse Macabre Berkeley (1981) The bestselling horror author of all time, Stephen King, knows better than anyone else in the world what scares you, and why. Now, in his most unusual masterpiece, he takes you on his personal tour of the dark ballromm of horror. Come. Take hs arm. Let the dance begin... The Dark Half Viking (1989) When Thad Beaumont wakes to the nightmare of George Stark, he hears birds, thousands of them, all chirping and twittering at the same time, and with the sound comes a presentiment full of memory and foreboding: The sparrows are flying again. Thad Beaumont is a writer, and for a dozen years he secretly published novels under the name of "George Stark" because he was no longer able to write under his own name. He even invented a slightly sinister author biography to satisfy the many fans of Stark's violent bestsellers. 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 in fact has a good reason to lay Stark to rest. So, with nationwide publicity, a bit of guilt, and a good deal of relief, the pseudonym is retired. In the small town of Castle Rock, Maine, where Thad and Liz keep a summer home, Sheriff Alan Pangborn ponders the brutal roadside murder of a man named Homer Gamache. When Homer's pick-up truck is found, the bloody fingerprints of the perpetrator are all over it. They match Thad Beaumont's exactly. Armed with hard evidence, Pangborn pays the Beamonts a visit, and suddenly he too is thrust into a dream so bizarre that neither criminal science nor his own sharp mind can make sense of it. At the center of the nightmare is the devastating figure of George Stark, Thad Beaumont's dark half - impossibly alive and relentlessly on the loose - a killing machine that destroys everyone on the path that leads to the man who created him. As Stark approaches, as Thad and Liz contend with the escalating horror and implacable threat of his own existence and Thad reaches deep inside his own mind to mount a defense, forces gather in the air above Castle Lake, outriders of the dead to the land of the living... To whom do they belong? Here is The Dark Half, a tale of terror so real and fascinating that Stephen King's growing legion of fans will find themselves squirming in the master's heart-stopping, blood-curdling grip - and loving every minute of it. November 3, 1987 - March 16, 1989 The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Donald M. Grant (1982) This heroic fantasy is set in a world of ominous landscape and macabre menace that is a dark mirror of our own. A spellbinding tale of good versus evil, it features one of Stephen King's most powerful creations - The Gunslinger, a haunting figure who embodies the qualities of the lone hero through the ages from anvient myth to frontier western legend. His pursuit of The man in Black, his liason with the sexually ravenous Alice, his friendship with the kid from Earth called Jake, are part of a drama that is both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, an alchemy of storytelling sorcery. Complete in itself, The Gunslinger is the first novel in an epic series, The Dark Tower , that promises to be Stephen King's crowning achievement. Main Characters: Jake Chambers The boy Roland met at the Way Station. He was killed in the other world when pushed in front of a Cadillac. He fell into an abyss when Roland chose to pursue the Man in Black rather than rescue him. Cort Roland's teacher in Tull The Man in Black the man that Roland pursued, (presumed to be Randall Flagg from the The Stand), Walter, The Prophet of Doom, the voice of Jeremiah. Roland knew that the Man in Black was somehow tied up with his quest for the Dark Tower but could not identify in what way. Maerlyn the Ageless Stranger. The Man in Black's master. Roland the last Gunslinger The First the first of the three that Roland had to draw together. A demon called heroin had infested him. The Second the second of the three, she would come on wheels The Third the third of the three. He would come in chains. Notes of Interest: 1. Please see the Dark Tower FAQ for threads and interesting side notes, for they are too numerous to mention here. The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three Donald M. Grant (1987) The Drawing of the Three continues the epic saga of The Dark Tower , hurling The Gunslinger into the twentieth century. Once again Stephen King masterfully interweaves dark, evocative fantasy and icy realism, as his hero, Roland, The Last Gunslinger, pursues his quest for The Dark Tower. Roaming another world that is a nightmarishly distorted mirror image of our own, he is drawn through a mysterious door that brings him into 1980's America. Here he links forces with the defiant young Eddie Dean and with beautiful, brilliant, and brave Odetta Holmes, in a savage struggle against underworld evil and otherworldly enemies. With a storytelling skill that is sheer magic, and with breathtaking boldness of imagination, Stephen King has risen to the peak of his power to create a compelling epic that is at once enigmatic and familiar... and always compulsively readable. The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands Donald M. Grant (1992) With The Waste Lands , the third masterful novel in Stephen King's epic saga The Dark Tower , we again enter the realm of the mightiest imagination of our time. King's hero, Roland, the Last Gunslinger, moves ever closer to the Dark Tower of his dreams and nightmares - as he crosses a desert of damnation in a macabre world that is a twisted mirror image of our own. With him are those that he has drawn to this world, street-smart Eddie Dean and courageous wheelchair-bound Susannah. Ahead of him are mind-rending revelations about who he is and what is driving him. Against him is arrayed a swelling legion of fiendish foes both more and less than human. And as the pace of action and adventure, discovery and danger pulse-pounding quickens, the reader is inescapably drawn into a breathtaking drama that is both hauntingly dreamlike... and eerily familiar. The Waste Lands is a triumph of storytelling sorcery - and further testament to Stephen King's novelistic mastery. The Dead Zone Viking (1979) Johnny, the small boy who skated at breakneck speed into an accident that for one horrifying moment plunged him into The Dead Zone Johnny Smith, the small-town schoolteacher who spun the wheel of fortune and won a four-and-a- half year trip into The Dead Zone John Smith, who awakened from an interminable coma with an accursed power - the power to see the future and the terrible fate awaiting mankind in The Dead Zone Main Characters: George Bannerman The Castle Rock sheriff Sarah Bracknell Johnny's girlfriend Frank Dodd a deputy in Castle Rock who turned out to be the Castle Rock Strangler Sonny Elliman Greg Stillson's right hand man Walter Hazlett the man Sarah married when Johnny didn't come out of the coma John Smith the man who came out of the coma after 5 years with his precognitive gift, a man with a mission. Greg Stillson the maniacal presidential candidate who would one day destroy the world, if not stopped. Notes of Interest: 1. The first novel to take place in Castle Rock, Maine. 2. The book Carrie is mentioned 3. Frank Dodd killed 7 women from 1970 to 1975 Different Seasons Viking (1982) "Is horror all you write?" is the second most frequent question Stephen King encounters*, he tells us in the Afterword to this superlative quartet of novels. Although he is by now a world-class grand master of the horrific, he resists entombment in that genre. That he can transcend horror is proved triumphantly in these four works. At the same time, nobody in search of the utterly distinctive King brand of driving narrative, graphically rendered scene and character, and stamp-on-the-clinging-fingers cliffhanger plot wil go away unsatisfied. Consider the four: Hope Springs Eternal Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption - the most satisfying tale of unjust imprisonment and offbeat escape since The Count of Monte Cristo. Summer of Corruption Apt Pupil - a golden California schoolboy and an old man whose hideous past he uncovers enter into a fateful and chilling mutual parasitism. Fall From Innocence The Body - four rambunctious young boys venture into the Maine woods and in sunlight and thunder find life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. A Winter's Tale The Breathing Method - a tale told in a strange club about a woman determined to give birth no matter what. If these tales turn out to have an interlacing of nightmarish elements after all, the reason is not the occult, but the twentieth-century humanity's apparent determination to return to the Dark Ages, a time for which Stephen King is obviously the ideal bard. * Most frequent question: "Where do you get your ideas?" "The Body" - written immediately following 'Salem's Lot "Apt Pupil" - written immediately following The Shining "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" - written immediately following The Dead Zone "The Breathing Method" - written immediately following Firestarter Dolan's Cadillac Lord John Press Notes of Interest: 1. Collected in Nightmares & Dreamscapes Dolores Claiborne Viking (1993) By her own account she's an old Yankee bitch, Dolores Claiborne: foul temper, foul mouth, foul life. Folks on Little Tall Island have been waiting thirty years to find out just what happened on the eerie dark day her husband, Joe, died - the day of the total eclipse. The police want to know what happened yesterday, when rich, bedridden Vera Donovan, the island's grande dame sans merci and Dolores's longtime employer, died suddenly in her care. With no choice but to talk, Dolores talks up a storm. "Everything I did, I did for love," she says, and this spellbidning novel is at once her confession and her defense. Given a voice as compelling as any in contemporary fiction, her story centers on a disintegrating marriage's molten core, where the mind's unblinking eye becomes huge with hate and a woman's heart turns murderous. it unfolds the strange intimacy between Dolores and Vera, and the link that binds them. It shows, finally, how fierce love can be, and how dreadful its consequences. And how the soul, harrowed by the hardest life, can achieve a kind of grace. But that is for readers to judge. They will come away with different verdicts for Dolores, perhaps. But once taken inside the dark room of her life, lit by the brilliant intensity of Stephen King's storytelling, they will never forget her. October 1989 - February 1992 The Eyes of the Dragon Viking (1987) Once Upon a Time - There Was Terror and dragons and princes... evil wizards and dark dungeons... an enchanted castle and a terrible secret. With this enthralling masterpiece of magical evil and daring adventure, Stephen King takes you in his icy grip and leads you into the most shivery and irresistible kingdom of wickedness... THE EYES OF THE DRAGON Firestarter Viking (1980) "Andy could feel something building in the air, building up around Charlie like an electric charge. The hair on his arms suddenly began to stir and move, like kelp in an invisible tide. He looked down at her and saw her face, so small, now so strange. It's coming, he thought helplessly. It's coming, oh my God, it really is." In 1969, Andy McGee and Vicky Tomlinson participate in a drug experiment run by a veiled government agency known as The Shop. One year later they marry. Two years after that their little girl, Charlie, sets her teddy bear on fire... by looking at it. Now that Charlie is eight, she doesn't start fires anymore. Her parents have taught her to control her pyrokinesis, the ability to set anything - toys, clothes, even people - aflame. But The Shop knows about and wants this pigtailed "ultimate weapon." Shop agents set out to hunt down Charlie and her father in a ruthless and terrifying chase that ranges from the streets of New York to the backwoods of Vermont. And once they get her they plan to use Charlie's capacity for love to force her into developing a power as horrifyingly destructive as it is seductive. What they don't take into account is that even a child can know the pleasure of the whip hand and the satisfaction of revenge. Let the reader beware, for Firestarter is Stephen King at his most mesmerizing... and menacing. Main Characters: Captain (Cap) Hollister Head of the Shop, who wanted to use Charlie's talents to influence world leaders Andrew McGee Charlie's father, took part in an experiment which gave him the limited ability to influence people with his mind. Charlie (Charlene Roberta) McGee The Firestarter Vicky Tomlinson McGee Charlie's Mother, took part in an experiment which gives her telekenetic abilities. John Rainbird Shop operative and assassin. He was to bring Charlie in for the Shop. Notes of Interest: 1. Lot Six was the experimental chemical compound injected into twelve college students in an experiment. It was supposed to be a mild hallucinogenic but actually enhanced psychic powers. 2. The Lot Six Twelve were the people who took part in the experiment, 2 died during the test, two went hopelessly insane, one died in an auto accident (suicide), one leaped form the roof of the the Cleveland Post Office, three others committed suicide, one worked for Telemyne Corp, and that left 2: Andy and his wife. Four Past Midnight Viking (1990) You are strapped in an airline seat on a flight beyond hell. You are forced into a hunt for the most horrifying secret a small town ever hid. You are trapped in the demonic depths of a writer's worst nightmare. You are focusing in on a beast bent on shredding your sanity. You are in the hands of Stephen King at his mind-blowing best with an extraordinary quartet of full-length novellas guaranteed to set your heart-stopwatch at - Four Past Midnight. * The Langoliers * The Library Policeman * Secret Window, Secret Garden * The Sun Dog Gerald's Game Viking (1992) Stephen King gives us his most ambitious work yet - a novel of brilliant intensity, excruciating suspense, and uncanny insight into the dark corners of the indomitable female psyche. On a warm weekend in October, Jessie and Gerald Burlingame are alone in the bedroom of their Maine summer house, playing a game that isn't listed in Hoyle's. But suddenly, as Jessie hears the click of the second handcuff locking her to the bedposts and sees her husband looming over her, a nerve-snap of recognition tells her that this time Gerald is playing for keeps. Her next move is furious, violent, and, she is shocked to discover, deadly. Giving up control is scary; it is terrifying when there is no one left to give it to. Except that Jessie is not alone. Over the next twenty-eight hours, trapped in a lakeside house that has become a prison, Jessie will come face-to-face with all the things she has ever feared, and the unlatched back door banging fretfully in the breeze is an open invitation to horrors she has never imagined. Inside the darkening bedroom, shadows gather in mute menace, while inside Jessie's head a taunting chorus of voices whispers and shrieks: "Women alone in the dark are like open doors,... and if they cry out for help, who knows what dread things may answer?" Stephen King knows. Nothing he has written before will prepare readers for the challenges of Gerald's Game. It's a fiendishly imagined version of No Exit. It's a nerve-wracking excavation of the deepest layers of a woman's fear and courage. It's our foremost literary terrorist exploring what happens when the ordinary routine of one woman's life is suddenly eclipsed by the irrational. Jessie Burlingame's nerves are about to be strenuously tested. So, Reader, are yours. - November 16, 1991 Insomnia Viking (1994) Ralph Roberts has a problem: he isn't sleeping so well these days. In fact, he's hardly sleeping at all. Each morning, the news conveyed by the bedside clock is a little worse: 3:15... 3.02... 2:45... 2:15. The books call it "premature waking"; Ralph, who is still learning to be a widower, calls it a season in hell. He's begun to notice a strangeness in his familiar surroundings, to experience visual phenomena that he can't quite believe are hallucinations. Soon, Ralph thinks, he won't be sleeping at all, and what then? A problem, yes - though perhaps not so uncommon, you might say. But Ralph has lived his entire life in Derry, Maine, and Derry isn't like other places, as millions of Stephen King readers will gladly testify. They remember It, also set in Derry, and know there's a mean streak running through this small New England city; underneath its ordinary surface awesome and terrifying forces at work. The dying, natural and otherwise, has been going on in Derry for a long, long time. Now Ralph is a part of it. So are his friends. And so are the strangers they encounter. You, Gentle Reader, may never sleep again. Welcome to Insomnia. September 10, 1990 - November 10, 1993 It Viking (1986) 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 to face the nightmare without an end and the evil without A NAME... The Long Walk New American Library (1979) Only death can keep you from the finish line - in the ultimate competition of the all-too-near future... Mid-Life Confidential Viking (1994) Last year, fifteen of America's most popular writers left their day jobs for life on the rock 'n' roll road. They stayed up late, ate junk food, traveled by bus, and actually tried to play and sing before paying audiences. Here's the whole sordid story, in hard-to-believe words and even harder-to-believe pictures. "Rock 'n' Roll," says Stephen King, "continues to renew and refresh those who practice its mysteries." Hitching their tour bus to that star, he and the other bestselling authors in the Rock Bottom Remainders spent two weeks barnstorming the East Coast - playing clubs where the customers brandished books, and clubs where the listeners brandished clubs - massacring rock 'n' roll classics everywhere. Mid-Life Confidential tells their story, the how and why of one of the strangest journeys in the history of rock 'n' roll (not to mention literature). Taking their solos chapter by chapter, each of the Remainders celebrates the passion for rock that united them. And each muses - provocatively, anecdotally, often hilariously, occasionally even seriously - on what it means to enter mid-life in one of the most isolating of the arts and try to get away from it all, in a project that requires fourteen other people to make it work. You'll witness Amy Tan get way, way past her previous image - in thigh-high leather boots and a whip - while Roy Blount, Jr., tries to light her cigarette. You'll learn what the Critics Chorus was up to - way off to the side. With 100 candid (and often excruciatingly embarrassing) photographs by Tabitha King, this all-star cast has created a smash hit. If you're a fan, or if you've ever dreamed of being in a rock band - check it out! Misery Viking (1987) Stephen King is arguably the most popular novelist in the history of American fiction. He owes his fans a love letter. Misery is it. Paul Sheldon, author of a bestselling series of historical romances, wakes up one winter day in a strange place, a secluded farmhouse in Colorado. He wakes up to unspeakable pain (a dislocated pelvis, a crushed knee, two shattered legs) and to a bizarre greeting from the woman who has saved his life: "I'm your number one fan!" Annie Wilkes is a huge ex-nurse, handy with controlled substances and other instruments of abuse, including an axe and a blowtorch. A dangerous psychotic with a Romper Room sense of good and bad, fair and unfair, Annie Wilkes may be Stephen King's most terrifying creation. It's not fair, for example, that her favorite character in the world, Misery Chastain, has been killed by her creator, as Annie discovers when Paul's latest novel comes out in paperback. And it's not good that her favorite writer has been a Don't-Bee and written a different kind of novel, a nasty novel, the novel he has always wanted to write, the only copy of which now lies in Annie's angry hands. Because she wants Paul Sheldon to be a Do-Bee, she buys him a typewriter and a ream of paper and tells him to bring Misery back to life. Wheelchair-bound, drug-dependent, locked in his room, Paul doesn't have much choice. He's an entertainer held captive by his audience. A writer in serious trouble. But writers have weapons too... Misery is a nightmare only Stephen King could have, and one only Stephen King could render in such gruesome detail. Nice of him to share it with us. September 23, 1984 - October 7, 1986 Now my tale is told. My Pretty Pony Knopf (1989) My Pretty Pony is a gentle story of a grandfather and his grandson. The old man, George Banning, is trying to explain the concept of time (and its "relativity") to the young boy, Clivey Banning. Time is a "pretty pony," and Grandpa tried to make the boy understand that "Time ain't got nothing' to do with how fast you can count." He tries to make the boy see that there are two kinds of time: Both were real, but only one was really real. * Notes of Interest: 1. Collected in Nightmares & Dreamscapes Needful Things Viking (1991) With a demonic blend of malice and affection, Stephen King says goodbye to the town he put on the map - Castle Rock, Maine... where Polly Chalmers runs You Sew and Sew and Sheriff Alan Pangborn is in charge of keeping the peace. It's a small town, and Stephen King fans might think they know its secrets pretty well: they've been here before. Leland Gaunt is a stranger - and he calls his shop Needful Things. Eleven-year-old Brian Rusk is his first customer, and Brian finds just what he wants most in all the world: a '56 Sandy Koufax baseball card. By the end of the wekk, Mr. Gaunt's business is fairly booming, and why not? At Needful Things, there's something for everyone. And, of course, there is always a price. For Leland Gaunt, the pleasure of doing business lies chiefly in seing how much people will pay for their most secret dreams and desires. And as Leland Gaunt always points out, at Needful Things, the prices are high indeed. Does that stop people from buying? Has it ever? For Alan and Polly, this one week in autumn will be an awful test - a test of will, desire, and pain. Above all, it will be a test of their ability to grasp the true nature of their enemy. They may have a chance... But maybe not, because, as Mr. Gaunt knows, almost everything is for sale: love, hope, even the human soul. With the potent storytelling authority that millions of readers have come to prize, Stephen King delivers an Our Time with a vengeance, an inimitable farewell to a place his fiction has often and long called home. October 24, 1988 - January 28, 1991 Night Shift Doubleday (1978) 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, NIGHT SHIFT will plunge you into the subterranean labyrinth of the most spine-tingling, eerie imaginations of our time. * Battleground * The Boogeyman * Children of the Corn * Graveyard Shift * Gray Matter * I am the Doorway * I Know What You Need * Jerusalem's Lot * The Last Rung on the Ladder * The Lawnmower Man * The Man Who Loved Flowers * The Mangler * Night Surf * One for the Road * Quitters,Inc * Sometimes They Come Back * Strawberry Spring * Trucks Nightmares & Dreamscapes Viking (1993) Here are twenty superlative stories devilishly designed by Stephen King to take you where you never dreamed of going before. Included, too, are a telescript that made home screen history, a startling poem, and an essay that Stephen King regards as his best nonfiction writing. These versatile selections vary widely in style and subject matter and vividly display the full range of Stephen King's matchless imagination. And to add to his readers' pleasure and curiosity, King includes his own entrancing inside accounts of how the stories came into being and why. Stephen King calls this extraordinary retrospective _Nightmares and Dreamscapes._ But don't let his title fool you. When you read it, sleep will be the furthest thing from your mind. * Brooklyn August * Chattery Teeth * Crouch End * Dedication * The Doctor's Case * Dolan's Cadalic * The End of the Whole Mess * The Fifth Quarter * It Grows on You * Head Down * Home Delivery * The House on Maple Street * The Moving Finger * My Pretty Pony * The Night Flier * Popsy * Rainy Season * Sneakers * Sorry, Right Number * Suffer the Little Children * The Ten O'Clock People * Umney's Last Case * You Know They Got a Hell of a Band Nightmares in the Sky Viking (1988) Pet Sematary Doubleday (1983) The Creeds. An ideal family. Physician father, beautiful wife, charming little daughter, adorable infant son. Close, loving, wonderfully alive. When they found the old house and enchanting grounds in rural Maine, it seemed too good to be true. It was. For the truth was bloodchilling - something more horrifying than death itself, and hideously more powerful... Main Characters: Stanley (Stanny) Bouchard the man who told about the secret Micmac burial ground. Church the Creed's 5 year-old cat. Louis buries him in the secret burial ground and he comes back. Gage Creed Louis's son, who is killed by a truck, Louis eventually buries him in the secret burial ground Louis Creed the man who can't resist the secret behind the Pet Sematary. Rachel Creed Louis's wife and another visitor to the secret burial ground Notes of Interest: 1. King wrote Pet Sematary while living in a rental home in Orrington, Maine which had a pet cemetary behind the house. 2. Cujo was mentioned in the book as the St. Bernard who went rabid downstate The Plant Philtrum (1982, 1983, 1985) John Kenton, a beleagured editor at failing Zenith House publishers, receives a query letter from a "writer" named Carlos Detweiller. Carlos has written a book called True Tales of Demon Infestations , and wishes to have it published by Zenith House (since they did such a good job with Bloody Houses , he tells them). Kenton decides on a whim to look at a proposal but instead Carlos sends him the entire manuscript, which includes photos of what appears to be an actual human sacrifice. Kenton calls the police, Carlos is brought in for questioning, and when the photos turn out to be fakes, he is released, but vowing revenge on Kenton. Kenton begins to receive letters from a "Roberta Solrac" ("Carlos" spelled backwards), and one day a mysterious plant appears in the mail for Kenton. * Rage New American Library (1977) A high-school show-and-tell session explodes into a nightmare of evil... Roadwork New American Library (1981) What happens when one good-and-angry man fights back is murder - and then some... Rose Madder Viking (1995) Roused by a single drop of blood on the bedsheet, Rosie Daniels wakens from fourteen years of a nightmare marriage and suddenly takes flight. She uses her husband's ATM card to buy a bus ticket, determined to lose herself in a place where Norman won't find her. She'll worry about all the rest later. Alone in a strange city, she begins to make a new life, and good things start to happen. Metting Bill Steiner is one; and finding a junk-shop painting is another. It may be bad art but it's perfect for her new apartment - and somehow, it seems to want her as much as she wants it. Still, it's hard for Rosie not to keep looking over her shoulder, and with good reason. Her husband is a cop, with the instincts of a predator. He's very good at finding people. The fact that he's losing his mind might even be an advantage. Rose-maddened and on the rampage, Norman Daniels becomes a force of relentless terror and savageness, a man almost mythic in his monstrosity. For Rosie to survive, for her to have a chance in her brave new world, she must enter her own myth - a world that lies beyond the surface of a work of art - and become a woman she never knew she could be: Rose Madder. June 10, 1993 - November 17, 1994 The Running Man New American Library (1982) In the year 2025, the best men don't run for president, they run for their lives... 'Salem's Lot Doubleday (1975) The town knew darkness... but no one dared talk about the high, sweet, evil laughter of a child... and the sucking sounds... Main Characters: Kurt Barlow Antiques expert. Vampire. Danny Glick one of the kids turned into a vampire Hubie Marsten owner of the Marsten House that Kurt Barlow eventually bought Ben Mears the writer who discovered the truth about Jerusalem's Lot Susan Norton Love interest of Ben Mears Mark Petrie young boy who helps Ben Mears destroy the Vampires Notes of Interest: 1. One of the characters in the book was Judy Overlook The Shining Doubleday (1977) What of the penetrating cold terror of an old hotel, a haunted place of seductive evil with a malevolent will of its own and a five-year-old boy of innocent beauty whose mind mirrors the nightmarish secrets of its past? Behind every door of the Overlook's 110 empty rooms there is a chamber of horror. Little Danny knows of these things because he has the terrible power - THE SHINING Main Characters: * Dick Hallorann The cook at the overlook, a friend of Danny Torrence who came back to help when things went really wrong. He also had the "shine". He was also mentioned in It . * Tony Danny's invisible playmate who made the word "redrum" famous * Danny (Daniel Anthony) Torrance The five year old with the "Shine". * Wendy Torrance Danny's mother * Jack Torrance Danny's father, a failed writer who succumbed to the evil in the Overlook Hotel Notes of Interest: 1. King got the inspiration to write The Shining when he visited the Stanley Hotel in Colorado. They visited on closing day and there was only one American Express sales form left. American Express was the only card King had with him. King jokes that The Shining would not have been written if there hadn't been that sales form. 2. Room 217 - Where the old lady (Mrs. Massey) killed herself. Danny sees her getting out of the bathtub 3. Room 300 - The presidential suite 4. The Masked Ball - Was to celebrate the grand opening of the Overlook Hotel, August 29. 1945 5. The prologue, "Before the Play", was published in Whispers #17/18 Aug 82 but has never been published together with The Shining Skeleton Crew Putnam (1985) The Master at his scarifying best! From heart-pounding terror to the eeriest of whimsy - tales from the outer limits of one of the greatest imaginations of our time! Evil that breathes and walks and shrieks, brave new worlds and horror shows, human desperation bursting into deadly menace - such are the themes of these astounding works of fiction. In the tradition of Poe and Stevenson, of Lovecraft and The Twilight Zone, Stephen King has fused images of fear as old as time with the iconography of contemporary American life to create his own special brand of horror - one that has kept millions of readers turning the pages even as they gasp. In the book-length story "The Mist," a supermarket becomes the last bastion of humanity as a peril beyond dimension invades the earth... With "Word Processor of the Gods," you can make your dreams come true - along with your nightmares... Touch "The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands," and say your prayers... There are some things in attics which are better left alone, things like "The Monkey"... The most sublime woman driver on earth offers a man "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" to paradise... A boy's sanity is pushed to the edge when he's left alone with the odious corpse of "Gramma"... If you were stunned by Gremlins, the Fornits of "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet" will knock your socks off... Trucks that punish and beautiful teen demons who seduce a young man to massacre; curses whose malevolence grows and angels of grace - here, indeed, is a night-blooming bouquet of chills and thrills. * The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet * Beachworld * Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkman #2) * Cain Rose Up * Gramma * Here There by Tygers * The Jaunt * The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands * The Mist * The Monkey * Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1) * Mrs. Todd's Shortcut * Nona * Paranoid: A Chant * The Raft * The Reach * The Reaper's Image * Survivor Type * Uncle Otto's Truck * The Wedding Gig * Word Processor of the Gods The Stand Doubleday (1978) EPIC TERROR TO CHILL YOUR DREAMS June 16, 1985. That is when the horror began - the evil that started in a laboratory and took over America. Those who died quickly were the lucky ones. For the scattered survivors, wandering through a country turned into a gigantic graveyard, life has become a nightmare struggle. They escaped death, but now something even more terrifying is waiting to claim them - the most fiendish force ever to seek all humanity as slaves and victims. A strange, faceless, clairvoyant figure that is reaching for their very souls... Main Characters Randall Flagg the personification of evil also known as The Walking Dude, RF, Ahaz, The Dark Man, The Man with No Face, Anubis, Astaroth, Richard Fry, Ramsey Forrest, Robert Franq, John the Conqueror, The Midnight Rambler, Nyarlohotep, Old Creeping Judas, R'yelah, Seti, he can also be found in several other King works like The Dark Tower series. Nick Andros a deaf-mute who becomes a charter member of the ad hoc committee in the Free Zone. Glen Bateman a sixtyish assistant professor of sociology who met up with Stu Redman, a charter member of the Free Zone ad hoc committee, and he traveled to Las Vegas to fulfill Mother Abagail's final instructions. Kojak (Big Steve) Glen Bateman's dog Rita Blakemore Met Larry Underwood in Central Park, they travelled together until she died. Ralph Brentner Fortish man who picked up Nick and Tom on their way out of Kansas, became part of the final company who went to Las Vegas to confront Flagg Charles D. Campion the government employee who fled from the biological testing site when Project Blue fell apart and hit the gas pumps at Hapscomb's Texaco. Nadine Cross Woman Larry Underwood met at a New England Farmhouse. Flagg eventually chose her as his wife, and she cheated him out of a son by jumping out of a window in Las Vegas. Tom Cullen retarded man Nick met on Main street in May, OK. He was sent as a spy to Las Vegas. He saves Stu Redman's life. Donald Merwin Elbert (Trashcan Man) He liked to set fires. One of Flagg's men who brought the atomic bomb to Las Vegas Richard (Dick) Ellis The veterinarian who was part of Nick Andros's company that went to Mother Abagail's. Judge Richard Farris 70 year old man who joined Larry Underwood's group. He was one of three spies sent to Las Vegas Mother Abigail Freemantle the 108 year old black woman who summoned the good guys through dreams Frannie (Frances Rebecca) Goldsmith Travelled with Harold, met and married Stu and had the first baby in the Free Zone which managed to survive after the plague Lloyd Henreid Became Flagg's right hand man in Las Vegas Harold Emery Lauder Traveled to the Free Zone with Stu and Frannie. He eventually gave into the powers of darkness and blew up Nick Andros' house. Julie Lawry the 16 year old girl Nick met in the drugstore, she wound up in Las Vegas and identified Tom as one of the spies from the Free Zone to Flagg. Stu Redman Became the marshall of the Free Zone, married Frannie and was the only survivor from the journey to Las Vegas. Larry Underwood a singer-songwriter who becomes one of the charter members of the Free Zone ad hoc committee, and makes the journey to Las Vegas. Notes of Interest: 1. Flagg at one time tells his men that Anubis is another of his names, Anubis was an Egyptian god of Mortuarey, circa 2700 BC - 400 ad. Anbus is a son of Re and either Nephthys or Isis. He takes the form of a black dog or jackal with ears pricked and long tail hanging. He was sometimes known as the claimer of hearts. 2. Flagg at one time tells his men that Ahaz is another of his names. Ahaz reigned 735-715 BC as the 12th king of Judah. Judah was attacked early in his reign by King Pekah of Isreal and King Rezin of Syria, who attempted to force Ahaz into a coalition agains Assyria. Additional incursions were made into Judaean teritory by the Edomites, to who Ahaz was forced to give up the important city of Elath (now Aqaba, Jordan). Ahaz asked help of the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III, who drove out the invaders but in return exacted tribute from Judah. Ahaz made various changes in the temple service and paid homage to the Assyrian gods. He was denounced for infidelity to Jehovah by the Hebrew prophet Isaiah, who opposed the alliance with Assyria. 3. When Larry is taken into custody in Utah he tells Flagg's men that staroth is another of his names. Astaroth is a plural from of the name Astoreth and used as a collective anem for godesses. Astyoreth is the Palestinian and Philistine Fertility and war goddess, circa 1200 bc - 200 bc. She was adopted, typically, as goddess of both love and war. She is usually depicted waring a horned headdress. 4. When Larry was taken into custody in Utah he tells Flagg's men that Nyarlathotep is another of Flagg's names. Nyarlathotep is a god of the Cthulhu Mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft. He is said to take on the appearance of a tall dark man. He is the crawling chaos, and a messenger of the gods. His progress across the face of the land is followed by riot, war, mass murder, suicide and insanity. The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition Doubleday (1990) This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides - or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abigail - and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man. In 1978 Stephen King published The Stand, the novel that is now considered one of his finest works. But as it was first published, The Stand was incomplete, since more than 150,000 words had been cut from the original manuscript. Now Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and embroiled in an elemental struggle between good and evil has been restored in its entirety. The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition includes more than 500 pages of material deleted, along with new material that King added as he reworked the manuscript for a new generation. It gives us new characters and endows familiar ones with new depths. It has a new beginning and a new ending. What emerges is a gripping work with the scope and moral complexity of a true epic. For the hundreds of thousands of fans who read The Stand in its original version and wanted more, this new edition is Stephen King's gift. And those who are reading The Stand for the first time will discover a triumphant and eerily plausible work of the imagination that takes on the issues that will determine our survival. February 1975 - December 1988 The Talisman Viking (1984) You are about to take a journey... a terrifying trip across a nightmare America filled with monsters beyond anything ever imagined before... a journey into the dark heart of horror... Thinner New American Library (1984) Billy Halleck, good husband, loving father, is both beneficiary and victim of the American Good Life: he has an expensive home, a nice family, and a rewarding career as a lawyer... but he is also fifty pounds overweight and, as his doctor keeps reminding him, edging into heart attack country. Then, in a moment of carelessness, Billy sideswipes an old gypsy woman as she is crossing the street - and her ancient father passes a bizarre and terrible judgment on him. "Thinner," the old gypsy man whispers, and caresses his cheek, like a lover. Just one word... but six weeks later and ninety-three pounds lighter, Billy Halleck is more than worried. He's terrified. And desperate enough for one last gamble... that will lead him to a nightmare showdown with the forces of evil melting his flesh away. And away. And away... The Tommyknockers Putnam (1987) Something was happening in Bobbi Anderson's idyllic small town of Haven, Maine. Something that gave every man, woman, and child in town powers far beyond ordinary mortals. Something that turned the town into a death trap for al outsiders. Something that came from a metal object, buried for millennia, that Bobbi accidentally stumbled across. It wasn't that Bobbi and the other good people of Haven had sold their souls to reap the rewards of the most deadly evil this side of hell. It was more like a diabolical takeover... an invasion of body and soul - and mind... Descriptions mostly come from back covers of the paperback editions or dust jackets of the hardback editions except * - from The Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia by Stephen Spignesi Special thanks to Barb Crooks for detailed information from her FAQ. [Stephen King page] Ed Nomura