Search results for ""Author Stephen King""

The No. 1 bestselling author's first classic collection of short stories which showcases the depths of his brilliant imagination - now with a stunning new cover look.A collection of tales to invade and paralyse the mind as the safe light of day is infiltrated by the shadows of the night.As you read, the clutching fingers of terror brush lightly across the nape of the neck, reach round from behind to clutch and lock themselves, white-knuckled, around the throat. This is the horror of ordinary people and everyday objects that become strangely altered; a world where nothing is ever quite what it seems, where the familiar and the friendly lure and deceive. A world where madness and blind panic become the only reality.Stories include:-Jerusalem's Lot-Graveyard Shift-Night Surf-I Am the Doorway-The Mangler-The Boogeyman-Gray Matter-Battleground-Trucks-Sometimes They Come Back-Strawberry Spring-The Ledge-The Lawnmower Man-Quitters, Inc.-I Know What You Need-Children of the Corn-The Last Rung on the Ladder-The Man Who Loved Flowers-One for the Road-The Woman in the Room

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Before he gave us the classic title On Writing, ('part biography, part collection of tips for the aspiring writer' - Guardian) Stephen King wrote a nonfiction masterpiece in Danse Macabre, 'One of the best books on American popular culture' (Philadelphia Inquirer)It was not long after Halloween when Stephen King received a telephone call from his editor. 'Why don't you do a book about the entire horror phenomenon as you see it? Books, movies, radio, TV, the whole thing.'The result is this unique combination of fantasy and autobiography, of classic horror writing honed to an unforgettable edge; ; an analysis of horror, terror and the supernatural in films, television and books by the bestselling master of the genre.DANSE MACABRE ranges across the whole spectrum of horror in popular culture from the seminal classics of Dracula and Frankenstein. It is a charming and fascinating book, replete with pertinent anecdote and observation, in which Stephen King describes his ideas on how horror works on many levels and how he brings it to bear on his own inimitable novels.

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Come close, children, and see the living crocodile. A vintage '54 Buick Roadmaster. At least, that's what it looks like . . .There is a secret hidden in Shed B in the state police barracks in Statler, Pennsylvania. A secret that has drawn troopers for twenty years - terrified yet irresistibly tempted to look at its chrome fenders, silver grille and exotic exhaust system.Young Ned Wilcox has started coming by the barracks: mowing the lawn, washing the windows, shovelling snow; it's a boy's way of holding on to his father - recently killed in a strange road accident by another Buick.And one day Ned peers through the windows of Shed B and discovers the family secret. Like his father, Ned wants answers. He deserves answers. And the secret begins to stir . . .

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Now with a stunning new cover look, comes a 'supreme page turner . . . and a plot that will keep you awake at night' (GQ) from the ultimate storyteller.You'll lose a lot of sleep.Ralph does. After his wife dies, he starts waking up earlier. And earlier. Then he starts to observe some strange things going on in the small town of Derry, Maine - auras, coloured ribbons streaming from people's heads, and two little men wandering about after dark.That's when Ralph begins to lose a lot more than sleep. He realises that his hitherto mild-mannered friend, Ed, is getting dangerously out of control. And now he is terrified that his home town is about to become the new Armageddon . . .

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Roused by a single drop of blood, Rosie Daniels wakes up to the chilling realisation that her husband is going to kill her. And she takes flight - with his credit card. Alone in a strange city, Rosie begins to build a new life: she meets Bill and she finds an odd junk shop painting, 'Rose Madder', which strangely seems to want her as much as she wants it. But it's hard for Rosie not to keep looking over her shoulder. Norman is a corrupt cop with the instincts of a predator. A man almost mythic in his monstrosity. For Rosie to survive, she must enter the myth and become a person she never knew she could be - Rose Madder.Because Norman is getting close. Rosie can feel how close he is getting . . .

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MICHAEL MCDOWELL was born in 1950 in Alabama. His notable books include the gothic novels Gilded Needles, The Elementals, Katie, and the gothic horror saga, Blackwater, which has become a phenomenal bestseller across Europe and elsewhere. He was also a successful screenwriter for film and TV, including his scripts for Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, Tales from the Crypt and The Nightmare Before Christmas. McDowell died in 1999. Tabitha King, wife of author Stephen King, completed his unfinished novel, Candles Burning.

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The iconic bestseller from Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, 'Love The Hunger Games? . . . This prescient novel is a fast-paced and fun read - a harbinger of reality TV - and you'll root for Ben to outwit the Games Network in this grim fight to the death' (Today Books, NBC News) - now with a stunning new cover look.It's not just a game when you're running for your life.Every night they tune in to the nation's favourite prime-time TV game show.They all watch, from the sprawling slums to the security-obsessed enclaves of the rich. They all watch the ultimate live death game as the contestants try to beat not the clock, but annihilation at the hands of the Hunters. Survive thirty days and win the billion dollar jackpot - that is the promise. But the odds are brutal and the game rigged. Best score so far is eight days.And now there is a new contestant, the latest Running Man, staking his life while a nation watches.Publisher's note: The Running Man is also one of the three stories featured in The Bachman Books.

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A CASTLE ROCK NOVEL WITH A FOREWORD BY STEPHEN KINGPREPARE TO RETURN AGAIN TO STEPHEN KING'S CASTLE ROCK, THE SLEEPY LITTLE TOWN BUILT ON A BEDROCK OF DEEP, DARK SECRETS, JUST AS IT'S ABOUT TO AWAKEN FROM ITS QUIET SLUMBER ONCE MORE.Something evil has swept into the small Maine town of Castle Rock on the heels of the latest winter storm. Sheriff Norris Ridgewick and his team are desperately searching for two missing girls.In Washington D.C., thirty-seven-year-old Gwendy Peterson couldn't be more different from the self-conscious teenaged girl who once spent a summer running up Castle Rock's Suicide Stairs. That same summer, she was entrusted - or cursed - with the extraordinary button box by a mysterious stranger in a black suit. Gwendy has never told a soul about the box - not even her husband. But one day it shows up again. Inspired by the curious appearance of the box and the troubling disappearances in her hometown, Gwendy returns to Castle Rock, where time is running out for the girls as a dangerous man is preparing the unthinkable . . .

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William Golding's Lord of the Flies is a dystopian classic: 'exciting, relevant and thought-provoking' (Stephen King). When a group of schoolboys are stranded on a desert island, what could go wrong?'One of my favorite books - I read it every couple of years.' (Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games)A plane crashes on a desert island. The only survivors are a group of schoolboys. By day, they discover fantastic wildlife and dazzling beaches, learning to survive; at night, they are haunted by nightmares of a primitive beast. Orphaned by society, it isn't long before their innocent childhood games devolve into a savage, murderous hunt ... 'Stands out mightily in my memory ... Such a strong statement about the human heart.' (Patricia Cornwell)'Terrifying and haunting.' (Kingsley Amis)'Beautifully written, tragic and provocative.' (E. M. Forster)ONE OF THE BBC'S ICONIC 'NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD'What readers are saying:'Every real human being should read this ... This is what we are.''It's brilliant, it's captivating, it's thought provoking and brutal and for some, its truly terrifying.''It can be read and re-read many times, and every time something new will appear.''There is a reason why this is studied at school ... Excellent read.''This is one of the few books I've read that I keep on my Kindle to read again.''I revisit this every few years and it's always fresh and impressive ... One of the best books I've ever read.'

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The iconic, highly-acclaimed bestseller from Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman - now with a stunning new cover look.Wentworth, Ohio: a small friendly town where the Carver children bicker over sweets in the E-Z shop and writer Johnny Marinville is the only resident who minds his own business. On Poplar Street, apart from the impending storm, it's just a normal summer's day - with Frisbees flying, lawn mowers humming and barbeques grilling. As the paperboy makes his round, he is unaware of the chrome red van idling up the hill . . .Soon the residents will be caught up in a game of wills as the regulators arrive in force to face a child whose powers of expression are just awakening.If you like THE REGULATORS, don't miss DESPERATION, written as an unidentical pair.

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The iconic and terrifying collaboration from two of the greatest storytellers of our time...Twelve-year-old Jack spends his days alone in a deserted coastal town, his father gone, his mother dying. Then he meets a stranger - and embarks on a terrifying journey. For Jack must find the Talisman, the only thing that can save his mother. His quest takes him into the menacing Territories, a parallel world where violence, surprise and the titanic struggle between good and evil reach across a mythic landscape.'Extraordinary . . . makes your hair stand on end' Washington Post'The ultimate in storytelling by two masters of the craft' Independent

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King and Chizmar join forces again with a powerful stand-alone novel that is also the final chapter in the Gwendy trilogy.When Gwendy Peterson was twelve, a stranger named Richard Farris gave her a mysterious box for safekeeping. It offered treats and vintage coins, but it was dangerous. Pushing any of its seven coloured buttons promised death and destruction.Years later, the button box re-entered Gwendy's life. A successful novelist and a rising political star, she was once more forced to deal with the temptations that the box represented - an amazing sense of wellbeing, balanced by a terrifyingly dark urge towards disaster.With the passing of time, the box has grown ever stronger and evil forces are striving to possess it. Once again, it is up to Gwendy Peterson, now a United States Senator battling the early symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease, to keep it from them. At all costs. But where can you hide something from such powerful entities?Gwendy's Final Task is a wildly suspenseful and at the same time deeply moving novel in which 'horror giants' (Publishers Weekly) Stephen King and Richard Chizmar take us on a journey from Castle Rock to another famous cursed Maine city to the MF-1 space station, where Gwendy must execute a secret mission to save the world. And, maybe, all worlds.

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The iconic bestseller from Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman - now with a stunning new cover look.He's got a plan. But he hasn't got a clue.Clayton Blaisdell's capers are strictly small-time until he meets George Rackley. With Blaze's brawn and George's brains, they pull off a hundred successful cons. Then George plans the one big score every small timer dreams of: kidnapping the infant heir to a family fortune.The trouble is that by the time the deal goes down, the brains of the operation has died. Or has he?Now Blaze is running into the white hell of the Maine woods with a baby as hostage. The crime of the century just turned into a race against time . . .

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The dystopian classic, introduced by Stephen King. When a group of schoolboys are stranded on a desert island, what could go wrong?ONE OF THE BBC'S '100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD''The first book with hands - strong ones that reached out of the pages and seized me by the throat. It said to me, 'This is not just entertainment; it's life or death.' ... I've been thinking about it ever since, for fifty years and more.' Stephen King'One of my favorite books - I read it every couple of years.' Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger GamesWhat are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? What's grown-ups going to think? Going off-hunting pigs-letting fires out-and now!A plane crashes on a desert island. The only survivors are a group of schoolboys. By day, they explore the dazzling beaches, gorging fruit, seeking shelter, and ripping off their uniforms to swim in the lagoon. At night, in the darkness of the jungle, they are haunted by nightmares of a primitive beast. Orphaned by society, they must forge their own; but it isn't long before their innocent games devolve into a murderous hunt ...'Thrills me with all the power a fiction can have ... Exemplary.' Ian McEwan'An existential fable backlit with death's incandescent glare.' Ben Okri'Violently real ... An apocalyptic novelist [who writes with] humanist rage and defiance.' Marlon James'Beautifully written, tragic and provocative.' E. M. Forster'A fragment of nightmare.' New Statesman'A post-apocalyptic, dystopian survivor-fantasy ... [A novel] for all time ... A cult classic.' Guardian'Stands out mightily in my memory ... Such a strong statement about the human heart.' Patricia Cornwell'Terrifying and haunting.' Kingsley AmisWhat readers are saying:'Every real human being should read this ... This is what we are.''It's brilliant, it's captivating, it's thought provoking and brutal and for some, its truly terrifying.''It can be read and re-read many times, and every time something new will appear.''There is a reason why this is studied at school ... Excellent read.''This is one of the few books I've read that I keep on my Kindle to read again.''I revisit this every few years and it's always fresh and impressive ... One of the best books I've ever read.'

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A comfortable, solid, middle-American town - inhabited by a serial killer...Children are disappearing, lost to the world, horrifically murdered. The best clue the detectives have - a serial killer from a century ago. Jack Sawyer, retired from the LAPD at 35, plagued by visions of another world. As a child, Jack visited the Territories, a menacing place of violence and madness, to save his dying mother. Now, if the latest child victim is to be saved, Jack must retrieve his lost childhood memories, and revisit the one place he hoped never to see again.

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In this spectacular father/son collaboration, Stephen King and Owen King tell the highest of high-stakes stories: what might happen if women disappeared from the world of men?All around the world, something is happening to women when they fall asleep; they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed, the women become feral and spectacularly violent...In the small town of Dooling, West Virginia, the virus is spreading through a women's prison, affecting all the inmates except one. Soon, word spreads about the mysterious Evie, who seems able to sleep - and wake. Is she a medical anomaly or a demon to be slain? The abandoned men, left to their increasingly primal devices, are fighting each other, while Dooling's Sheriff, Lila Norcross, is just fighting to stay awake.And the sleeping women are about to open their eyes to a new world altogether...

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King and Chizmar join forces again with a powerful stand-alone novel that is also the final chapter in the Gwendy trilogy.When Gwendy Peterson was twelve, a stranger named Richard Farris gave her a mysterious box for safekeeping. It offered treats and vintage coins, but it was dangerous. Pushing any of its seven coloured buttons promised death and destruction.Years later, the button box re-entered Gwendy's life. A successful novelist and a rising political star, she was once more forced to deal with the temptations that the box represented - an amazing sense of wellbeing, balanced by a terrifyingly dark urge towards disaster.With the passing of time, the box has grown ever stronger and evil forces are striving to possess it. Once again, it is up to Gwendy Peterson, now a United States Senator battling the early symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease, to keep it from them. At all costs. But where can you hide something from such powerful entities?Gwendy's Final Task is a wildly suspenseful and at the same time deeply moving novel in which 'horror giants' (Publishers Weekly) Stephen King and Richard Chizmar take us on a journey from Castle Rock to another famous cursed Maine city to the MF-1 space station, where Gwendy must execute a secret mission to save the world. And, maybe, all worlds.

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Part biographical sketch, part pronouncement on existence and literature, the French best-selling novelist Michel Houellebecq's H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life was published in France in 1991 and is the first non-fiction text ever published by the author. In this encomium, France’s most famous contemporary author praises his prewar American alter ego’s style, which couldn't be much less like his own. With a foreword by a Lovecraft admirer, Stephen King, this eloquently translated edition is both an insightful introduction to Lovecraft’s dark mythology and Houellebecq’s deadpan prose.

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'A resonant novella set in one of King's signature locales: the small town of Castle Rock, Maine' Washington PostThe small town of Castle Rock, Maine, has witnessed some strange events and unusual visitors over the years, but there is one story that has never been told...until now.There are three ways up to Castle View from the town of Castle Rock: Route 117, Pleasant Road, and the Suicide Stairs. Every day in the summer of 1974 twelve-year-old Gwendy Peterson takes the stairs, which are held by strong (if time-rusted) iron bolts and zig-zag up the cliffside.One day, while Gwendy catches her breath and listens to the shouts of the kids on the playground and the chink of an aluminium bat hitting a baseball, a stranger calls out to her. On a bench in the shade sits a man in a small, neat black hat. He offers Gwendy a mahogany box with coloured buttons. The buttons will produce gifts, such as chocolate which can make you slimmer. But he warns her that the gifts will be 'small recompense for the responsibility.'Journey back to Castle Rock in this chilling new novella by Stephen King, bestselling author of The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, and Richard Chizmar, award-winning author of A Long December

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The iconic bestseller from Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, which 'pulsates with evil . . . [and] will have you on the edge of your seat' (Publishers Weekly) - now with a stunning new cover look.'Thinner' - the old gypsy man barely whispers the word. Billy feels the touch of a withered hand on his cheek.Billy Halleck, prosperous if overweight citizen, happily married, shudders then turns angrily away. The old woman's death has been none of his fault. The courts have cleared him. She just stumbled in front of his car. Now he simply wants to forget the whole messy business.Later, when the scales tell him he is losing weight, it is just what the doctor ordered. His wife is pleased - as she should be. But . . .'Thinner' - the word, the old man's curse, has lodged in his mind like a fattening worm, eating at his flesh, at his reason. And with his despair, comes violence.

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Fasten your seatbelts for an anthology of turbulent tales curated by Stephen King and Bev Vincent. This exciting new collection, perfect for airport or aeroplane reading, includes an original introduction and story notes for each story by Stephen King, and brand new stories from Stephen King and Joe Hill.Stephen King hates to fly.Now he and co-editor Bev Vincent would like to share this fear of flying with you.Welcome to Flight or Fright, an anthology about all the things that can go horribly wrong when you're suspended six miles in the air, hurtling through space at more than 500 mph and sealed up in a metal tube (like - gulp! - a coffin) with hundreds of strangers. All the ways your trip into the friendly skies can turn into a nightmare, including some we'll bet you've never thought of before... but now you will the next time you walk down the jetway and place your fate in the hands of a total stranger.Featuring brand new stories by Joe Hill and Stephen King, as well as fourteen classic tales and one poem from the likes of Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Dan Simmons, and many others, Flight or Fright is, as King says, "ideal airplane reading, especially on stormy descents... Even if you are safe on the ground, you might want to buckle up nice and tight."Book a flight for this terrifying new anthology that will have you thinking twice about how you want to reach your final destination.Table of Contents:Introduction by Stephen KingCargo by E. Michael LewisThe Horror of the Heights by Sir Arthur Conan DoyleNightmare at 20,000 Feet by Richard MathesonThe Flying Machine by Ambrose BierceLucifer! by E.C. TubbThe Fifth Category by Tom BissellTwo Minutes Forty-Five Seconds by Dan SimmonsDiablitos by Cody GoodfellowAir Raid by John VarleyYou Are Released by Joe HillWarbirds by David J. SchowThe Flying Machine by Ray BradburyZombies on a Plane by Bev VincentThey Shall Not Grow Old by Roald DahlMurder in the Air by Peter TremayneThe Turbulence Expert by Stephen KingFalling by James L. DickeyAfterword by Bev Vincent

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The spellbinding saga of The Talisman is now a stunning graphic novel, vividly illustrated by artist Tony Shasteen. Here's a bold new look at the classic tale of treachery and betrayal that could only have sprung from the imaginations of master storytellers Stephen King and Peter Straub. In a run-down amusement park on a desolate beach in New Hampshire, thirteen-year-old Jack Sawyer is about to learn some hard truths-about his father's death, about why he and his mother are on the run from his sinister uncle Morgan, and about the real nature of the mysterious realm Jack once called the Daydreams. Now, with help from his newfound friend Speedy Parker, this young man will reclaim his identity as Travellin Jack and make his first foray back into the Territories to retrieve the magical Talisman, an object of immense cosmic significance. Yet even more important to Jack, the Talisman holds the key to saving his mother's life. In the Terrorities, where monsters lurk, evil watches, and an unbelievably precious prize awaits, Jack embarks upon a desperate quest to fulfill a destiny he never sought but cannot escape.

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'Debris from a comet drops a fabulously valuable new metal . . . turning it into a bloody, brawling boomtown. Great characters, fine writing, totally engrossing' - International bestselling author Stephen King on The Ninth MetalNamed a Most Anticipated SFF Fiction Book by New ScientistIt began with a comet. They called it Cain, a wandering star that passed by Earth, illuminating the night with a swampy green light and twinning the sky by day with two suns. A year later, Earth spun through the debris field the comet left behind. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of meteors plummeted into the atmosphere, destroying swaths of electrical grids, leaving shores of beaches filled with deceased sea life, and setting acres of land ablaze. It was then, they say, that the sky fell. It was then that Jack lost Mia.Five years after the disappearance of his daughter, Jack has fallen. Once an accomplished professor of botany, he's now a shell of a man who has all but withdrawn from life. Nora, his ex-wife, has thrown herself into her investigative work. Separately, they have each bandaged over the hole Mia left behind.Just as Jack is uncovering a new form of deadly parasitic fungus in his lab, Nora is assigned to investigate the cases of ritualistic murders dotting Seattle. The rituals consist of etchings - crosshatches are carved into bodies and eyes are scooped out of their sockets. The attackers appear to be possessed.It only takes a moment - for a sickness to infect, for a person to be killed, for a child to be lost. When Nora enlists Jack to identify the cause of this string of vicious deaths, Jack is quick to help. Together, they fight to keep their moments - the unexpected laughter, the extraordinary discoveries, the chance that Mia could come back home - but they find that what they're up against defies all logic, and what they have to do to save the world will change every life forever.PRAISE FOR THE COMET CYCLE'When Benjamin Percy publishes a novel, I have got to read that novel. The Ninth Metal continues his streak of thrilling, incisive genre bending goodness. Audacious and intelligent and exactly what I was dying to read' Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling on The Ninth Metal'Whether you choose to think of him as the Elmore Leonard of rural Minnesota or the Stephen King of Science Fiction, Percy-with his extraordinary and unrelenting eye-dishes up humanity like some kind of otherworldly blue plate special, at once deeply familiar and wildly new' Margaret Stohl, No. 1 New York Times Bestselling Author on The Ninth Metal'Take one part dystopia, one part sci-fi, two parts apocalypse, then ride them roughshod through a bleak and bloody western, and it still wouldn't get close to what Ben Percy does here, which is blow open the core of humanity's dark heart' Marlon James, Booker Prize winning author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf on The Ninth Metal'Masterful . . . Combines a missing-person case, romantic reconciliation, and a riveting sci-fi what-if . . . A thoroughly satisfying near-future glimpse of both disaster and salvation' Publishers Weekly'Terrifying, entertaining, and thought-provoking. . . something for everyone, science fiction fans and mystery fans alike' Kirkus Reviews

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