Prolific, bestselling author Stephen King has departed from his horror roots in recent years to write straight dramas, historical fiction, and thrillers of a more psychological nature. For those who prefer their King focused on supernatural evils that go bump in the night, here are some of his scariest:
‘Salem’s Lot (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $5.21)
Stephen King’s second novel, the classic vampire bestseller ’SALEM’S LOT, tells the story of evil in small-town America. For the first time in a major trade edition, this terrifying novel is accompanied by previously unpublished material from King’s archive, two short stories, and eerie photographs that bring King’s fictional darkness and evil to vivid life.
When Stephen King’s classic thriller ’SALEM’S LOT hit the stands in 1975, it thrilled and terrified millions of readers with tales of demonic evil in small-town America. Now, thirty years later and still scaring readers witless, ’SALEM’S LOT reemerges in a brilliant new edition, complete with photographs, fifty pages of deleted and alternate scenes, and two short stories related to the events of the novel.
While the original edition of ’SALEM’S LOT will forever be a premier horror classic, ’SALEM’S LOT: ILLUSTRATED EDITION, with the inclusion of material from King’s archive, is destined to become a classic in its own right and a must-have for all Stephen King fans. In this edition, the hair-raising story of Jerusalem’s Lot, a small town in Maine whose inhabitants succumb to the evil allure of a new resident, is told as the author envisioned it, complete with fifty pages of alternate and deleted scenes. With a new introduction by the author, two short stories related to the events and residents of Jerusalem’s Lot, the lavishly creepy photographs of Jerry Uelsmann, and a stunning new page design, this edition brings the story to life in words and pictures as never before.
No library will be complete without this ideal collector’s item for any King aficionado, the definitive illustrated edition of the great ’SALEM’S LOT.
Night Shift (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $5.99)
More than twenty-five stories of horror and nightmarish fantasy transform everyday situations into experiences of compelling terror in the worlds of the living, the dying, and the nonliving.
“Eerie. . . . Ought to chill the cockles of many a heart.” —Chicago Tribune
“A master. . . . [King] will catch you in his web and reach you at an elemental level where there is no defense.” —The Cincinnati Enquirer
“Stephen King has built a literary genre of putting ordinary people in the most terrifying situations. . . . he’s the author who can always make the improbable so scary you’ll feel compelled to check the locks on the front door.” —The Boston Globe
The Talisman – co-written with Peter Straub (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $7.94)
Why had twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer’s mother frantically moved the two of them from Rodeo Drive to a New York City apartment to the Alhambra, a fading ocean resort and shuttered amusement park in New Hampshire?
Who or what is she running from?
She is dying . . . and even young Jack knows she can’t outrun death.
But only he can save her–—for he has been chosen to search for a prize across an epic landscape of dangers and lies, a realm of innocents and monsters, where everything Jack loves is on the line.
Needful Things: The Last Castle Rock Story (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $7.69)
From Publisher’s Weekly:
A new store, Needful Things, opens in town, and its proprietor, Leland Gaunt, offers seemingly unbeatable (read: Faustian) bargains to Castle Rock’s troubled citizens.
Among them are Polly Chalmers, lonely seamstress whose arthritis is only one of the physical and psychic pains she must bear; Brian Rusk, the 11-year-old boy whose mother is not precisely attentive; and Alan Pangborn, the new sheriff whose wife and son have recently died. These are only three of the half-dozen or so brilliantly drawn people met in the novel’s one-month time span.
As the dreams of each strikingly memorable character, major and minor, inexorably turn to nightmare, individuals and soon the community are overwhelmed, while the precise nature of Gaunt’s evil thrillingly stays just out of focus.
The Shining (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $1.99)
With an excerpt from the sequel, Doctor Sleep.
Terrible events occur at an isolated hotel in the off season, when a small boy with psychic powers struggles to hold his own against the forces of evil that are driving his father insane.
It (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $7.99)
They were just kids when they stumbled upon the horror within their hometown.
Now, as adults, none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them all back to Derry, Maine, to face the nightmare without end, and the evil without a name…
The Stand (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $5.17)
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 to be 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 to its entirety. The Stand : The Complete And Uncut Edition includes more than five hundred pages of material previously 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 comlexity of a true epic.
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. 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.
Pet Sematary (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $5.17)
Don’t miss the classic tale from King of Horror and #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King, described by Publishers Weekly as “the most frightening novel Stephen King has ever written.”
When the Creeds move into a beautiful old house in rural Maine, it all seems too good to be true: physician father, beautiful wife, charming little daughter, adorable infant son—and now an idyllic home. As a family, they’ve got it all…right down to the friendly cat.
But the nearby woods hide a blood-chilling truth—more terrifying than death itself…and hideously more powerful.
The Creeds are going to learn that sometimes dead is better.