Showing results by author "Stephen King" in All Categories

A star-studded cast of readers presents unabridged tales of horror and suspense from master storyteller Stephen King. The Stephen King Amusement Park - an unnerving experience, with rides every which way to hell...and a few to glory. A solitary finger pokes out of a drain. Novelty teeth turn predatory. The Nevada desert swallows a Cadillac. Meanwhile, the legend of Castle Rock returns...and grows on you. What does it all mean? What else could it mean?

'I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger....' writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up '1922', the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerising tales from Stephen King, linked by the theme of retribution. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife Arlette proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness.

Welcome to Desperation. Once a thriving copper-mining town in the middle of the Nevada desert, Desperation is now eerily abandoned. It's the last place that travellers like the Carver family, bound for vacation, and writer Johnny Marinville, astride his Harley, would expect to be stopped and charged. But Desperation still has a local cop - a unique regulator who patrols the wilderness highway. The secrets buried in Desperation are as terrifying as the forces summoned to encounter them.

Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong? How about everything.

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

End of Watch is a compelling and chilling suspense novel which sees retired detective Bill Hodges back on the trail of his nemesis, Brady Hartsfield, the criminal the press called The Mercedes Killer. Foiled in his attempt to commit a second mass murder, Hartsfield is confined to a hospital brain-injury unit in a seemingly unresponsive state. But all is not what it seems: Brady is able to influence both his physician and the hospital librarian to commit crimes in the outside world.

A collection of four uniquely wonderful long stories, including a stand-alone sequel to the number one best seller The Outsider. News people have a saying: 'If it bleeds, it leads'. And a bomb at Albert Macready Middle School is guaranteed to lead any bulletin. Holly Gibney of the Finders Keepers detective agency is working on the case of a missing dog when she sees the footage on TV. But when she tunes in again, to the late-night report, she realises there is something not quite right about the correspondent who was first on the scene.

To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine, was just their hometown: familiar, well ordered for the most part. A good place to live. It was the children who saw - and felt - what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. Sometimes IT reached up, seizing, tearing, killing....

First came the days of the plague. Then came the dreams. Dark dreams that warned of the coming of the dark man. The apostate of death, his worn-down boot heels tramping the night roads. The warlord of the charnel house and Prince of Evil. His time is at hand. His empire grows in the west and the Apocalypse looms. For hundreds of thousands of fans who read The Stand in its original version and wanted more, this new edition is Stephen King's gift.

At midnight comes the point of balance. Of danger. The instant of utter stillness when, between two beats of the heart, an alternative reality can slip through, like a blade between the ribs, and switch you into a new and terrifying world. Four Past Midnight: four heart-stopping accounts of that moment when the familiar world fractures beyond sense, the fragments spinning away from the desperate, clutching reach of sanity....

In this classic collection of four novellas, the grand master takes you on irresistible journeys into the far reaches of horror, heartache and hope. 'Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption' is the story of two men convicted of murder - one guilty, one innocent - who form the perfect partnership as they dream up a scheme to escape from prison. In 'Apt Pupil' a golden schoolboy entices an old man with a past to join in a dreadful union.

When Mike Noonan's wife dies unexpectedly, the bestselling author suffers from writer's block. Until he is drawn to his summer home, the beautiful lakeside retreat called Sara Laughs. Here Mike finds the once familiar town in the tyrannical grip of millionaire Max Devore. Devore is hell-bent on getting custody of his deceased son's daughter and is twisting the fabric of the community to this purpose. Three year old Kyra and her young mother turn to Mike for help. And Mike finds them increasingly irresistible.

Christine was eating into his mind, burrowing into his unconscious. Christine, blood red, fat, and finned, was 20. Her promise lay all in her past. Greedy and big, she was Arnie's obsession, a '58 Plymouth Fury. Broken down but not finished. There was still power in her - a frightening power that leaked like sump oil, staining and corrupting. A malign power that corroded the mind and turned ownership into possession.

In a terrifying trip across America, young Jack Sawyer is searching for the Talisman, the only thing that can save his dying mother. His quest takes him into the menacing Territories where violence, surprise, and the titanic struggle between good and evil reach across a mythic landscape.

Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes howlingly funny, a story of invasion and battle, survival and heroism. It is a story of how men remember ... and how they love. In Derry, Maine, four young boys once stood together and did a brave thing. Something that changed them in ways they hardly understand. A quarter of a century later, the boys are men who have gone their separate ways. Though they still get together once a year, to go hunting in the north woods of Maine.

Stephen King has fully authorised a return to the harrowing world of The Stand through this original short story anthology, as presented by award-winning authors and editors Christopher Golden and Brian Keene. Bringing together some of today's greatest and most visionary writers, The End of the World As We Know It features unforgettable, all-new stories set during and after (and some perhaps long after) the events of The Stand - brilliant, terrifying, and painfully human tales that will resonate with readers everywhere as an essential companion to the classic, bestselling novel.

You'll lose a lot of sleep.... Ralph does. At first he starts waking up earlier. And earlier. Then the hallucinations start - the colours, shapes and strange auras. Not to mention the bald doctors who always turn up at the scene of a death. That's when Ralph begins to lose a lot more than sleep. When he begins to understand why his hitherto mild-mannered friend, Ed, is getting out of control - dangerously so. And why his hometown is about to become the new Armageddon....

In the near future, where America has become a police state, 100 boys are selected to enter an annual contest where the winner will be awarded whatever he wants for the rest of his life. The game is simple - maintain a steady walking pace of four miles per hour without stopping. Three warnings and you're out - permanently.

For 20 years the officers in the Pennsylvania State Police Barracks have kept a secret in Shed B: a vintage Buick which lures the troopers to come and take a look. Young Ned Wilcox, son of the recently deceased officer Curt, has started hanging around the Barracks. One day he can't resist peeking through the windows. And it's time to share the secret....

Dolores Claiborne has a confession to make.... She will take her time. Won't be hurried. Will do it her way, sparing neither details nor feelings. Hers or anyone else's. This is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Truth that takes you to the edge of darkness. Dolores Claiborne has a story to tell, and you'd better pay attention - or else.