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
