September 21st marks the 74th birthday for Stephen King. His books have sold over 350 million copies and to ensure that nightmares didn't just end there, his works have become movies, miniseries, television series, and comics. Also, he is my favorite person to follow on Twitter.
His book, On Writing, is also a favorite of mine.
Beginning with King's childhood, he tells us of the beginnings of his writing journey with inspiration from horror comics such as Tales From the Crypt, then takes up through his financial struggles whilst looking for a teaching position after college, and how he submitted short stories to various men's magazines. The book takes us through his career, his tools of trade and tips for writings, and how the 1999 accident that nearly killed him impacted his life.The first of King's novels to be published was Carrie
the novel that reminds us all how awful high school can be.stephenking.com provides an A to Z list of King's many works.
"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 new identity lined up and a scrupulously orchestrated, flawless escape plan. And then something happens that changes everything for Billy. A stranger needs rescuing, and Billy sacrifices the safety of his own perfectly devised new life to offer her protection. And then the two of them the most compelling and surprising duo in King fiction-set out on one last mission, to rectify the injustices of one extraordinarily evil man"--. Provided by publisher.
Sometimes growing up means facing your demons. The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine - as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave. LATER is Stephen King at his finest, a terrifying and touching story of innocence lost and the trials that test our sense of right and wrong. With echoes of King's classic novel It, LATER is a powerful, haunting, unforgettable exploration of what it takes to stand up to evil in all the faces it wears.
"Set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine 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.""-- Provided by publisher.
"Ralph Roberts never expected to live out his remaining golden years mourning the death of his beloved wife. He also never expected to begin suffering from chronic insomnia for the first time in his life. Each night he wakes up a little bit earlier until he's barely sleeping at all. During his overnight walks, he's now observing some strange things going on here in Derry, Maine--and they're more than sleep-deprived hallucinations. There's definitely a mean streak that's always been 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, and Ralph Roberts will soon find that lack of sleep is the least of his worries."--Page 4 of cover
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis' 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 10-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.
"The four never-before-published novellas in this collection represent horror master King at his finest, using the weird and uncanny to riff on mortality, the price of creativity, and the unpredictable consequences of material attachments. A teenager discovers that a dead friend's cell phone, which was buried with the body, still communicates from beyond the grave in 'Mr. Harrigan's Phone,' which reads like a Twilight Zone episode infused with an EC Comics vibe. In the profoundly moving 'The Life of Chuck,' a series of apocalyptic incidents bear out one character's claim that 'when a man or a woman dies, a whole world falls to ruin.' 'Rat' sees a frustrated writer strike a Faustian bargain to complete his novel, and in the title story, private investigator Holly Gibney, the recurring heroine of King's Bill Hodges trilogy and The Outsider, faces off against a ghoulish television newscaster who vampirically feeds off the anguish he provokes in his audience by covering horrific tragedies"--Publishers Weekly (03/09/2020).
Danny is only five years old but in the words of old Mr. Hallorann he is a 'shiner', aglow with psychic voltage. When his father becomes caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, his visions grow frighteningly out of control.
Struggling with alcoholism, Dan Torrance remains traumatized by the sinister events that occurred at the Overlook Hotel when he was a child. His hope for a peaceful existence soon becomes shattered when he meets Abra, a teen who shares his extrasensory gift of the 'shine.' Together, they form an unlikely alliance to battle the True Knot, a cult whose members try to feed off the shine of innocents to become immortal.
A group of bullied kids band together when a monster, taking the appearance of a clown, begins hunting children.
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