Product Description

King’s exciting collection contains twenty short stories, a short novel, THE MIST, and two poems, each tale showing the distinctive blend of unimaginable terror and realism that typifies King’s early work. We meet GRAMMA – who only wants to hug little George, even after she’s dead; a primeval sea creature with an insatiable appetite in THE RAFT; an innocent-looking monkey with evil powers in MONKEY and a host of other memorable King creations as he takes the unsuspecting reader on a fantastic journey through the dark, shadowy areas of our innermost fears.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #58276 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 784 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In the introduction to Skeleton Crew, his second collection of stories, King pokes fun at his penchant for "literary elephantiasis," makes scatological jokes about his muse, confesses how much money he makes (gross and net), and tells a story about getting arrested once when he was "suffused with the sort of towering, righteous rage that only drunk undergraduates can feel." He winds up with an invitation to a scary voyage: "Grab onto my arm now. Hold tight. We are going into a number of dark places, but I think I know the way."

And he certainly does. Skeleton Crew contains a superb novella ("The Mist") that alone is worth the price of admission, plus two forgettable poems and 20 short stories on such themes as an evil toy monkey, a human-eating water slick, a machine that avenges murder, and unnatural creatures that inhabit the thick woods near Castle Rock, Maine. The short tales range from simply enjoyable to surprisingly good.

In addition to "The Mist," the real standout is "The Reach," a beautifully subtle story about a great-grandmother who was born on a small island off the coast of Maine and has lived there her whole life. She has never been across "the Reach," the body of water between island and mainland. This is the story that King fans give to their friends who don't read horror in order to show them how literate, how charming a storyteller he can be. Don't miss it. --Fiona Webster

Sunday Telegraph
* 'Liable to leave the reader in a state of shock'

Review
'Liable to leave the reader in a state of shock' (Sunday Telegraph )

'Deliciously scary' (Cosmopolitan )

'As a storyteller King is unbeatable' (Mirror )

Customer Reviews

Whatever you do - don't open your eyes
This is by far the best collection of short stories King has released to date. Don't expect any great literary behemoths (I'm sure you weren't from Stephen King anyway) but do expect excellent, if highly implausible, bedtime tales of horror and fantasy that will both scare the pants off you and fill you with warmth. The Mist is almost a book in its own right and is one of the best things he has written (but it is kind of like the film The Fog). The Reach shows King at his haunting best, the sort of King you find guiding the pen over such excellent stories as The Body (from another excellent anthology of mini novels), Rita Hayworth & Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. Inbetween these two masterpieces lie roughly 20 little slices of death that range from all-out horror (Gramma, The Raft) to dabblings in sci-fi (The Jaunt, Wordprocessor of the Gods) to just great little tales of interest (Mrs Todd's Shorcut - one of my favourites - , The Wedding Party and the Ballad of the Flexible Bullet.).

For first timers and constant readers alike.

A consistent collection of mostly mediocre stories
One thing I'll give Skeleton Crew is that it is Stephen King's most consistent collection of short stories. Most of them are not bad, and they all keep around the same level of quality throughout. There are a few stinkers (such as Mrs. Todd's Shortcut), but the rest are three-star quality at the very least. Some brief comments on some of the stories:

THE MIST - More a novella than a short story, it's an exciting idea and should work great as a movie but I felt that it was a little anti-climactic. For the intrigue it sometimes provided, I ended up thinking it hadn't quite been worth it, although this may possibly be because, due to time constraints, I was forced to take it so slowly.

THE JAUNT - A neat little sci-fi story about teleportation (and its drawbacks) which I quite liked, with a good ending.

THE RAFT - An all-out screamer, about an oil-slick-like creature that devours people on a raft in the sea one by one. The most gruesome story in here.

GRAMMA - This is definitely the scariest story in the book. It's about a boy who is scared of his elderly and senile grandmother - and for good reason. The worst bit is the way it makes you feel ageist and misogynistic for being scared of the "gramma", as well.

There are other horror stories worth checking out, such as The Monkey and The Reaper's Image, but they are not fantastic.

But I am glad overall that I read these story collections. I think it's nice to be able to sit down and read a good story that you can finish all in one sitting. And horror works particularly well in this genre.

And who's more of a master of horror than Stephen King?

Collected short stories part 2...
'Skeleton Crew' is Stephen King's second collection of short stories, and perhaps inevitably is slightly weaker than 'Night Shift', consisting as it does of a mix of newer tales and older pieces that didn't quite make the grade for the last collection. Having said that this is still a good qulaity anthology, and with a range encompasing horror, science fiction, gangsters, and even a couple of poems there should be something for everyone here.

The collection is slightly unbalanced by the bloated opening tale 'The Mist' which at nearly 150 pages long is closer to a novella than a short story, and this deliberately cheesy tale of a group of people under seige in a supermarket from B-movie monsters is just too close to King's earlier (and shorter) story 'Trucks', not to mention George Romero's zombie films, to justify it's length.

Personal highlights for me from this collection would include 'Mrs Todd's Shortcut', a startling look at a woman who's quest to find the shortest route from A to B leads her down some very strange roads; 'The Raft' an incredibly grisly tale of a group of stranded swimmers being menaced by a bizarre sea creature; 'Word Processor of the Gods' which features a word processor that can literally 'insert' and 'delete' items in the real world; 'The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands' is another deliciously old-fashioned fireside horror tale from the gentlemans club previously featured in King's 'Different Seasons' collection; 'Survivor Type' is a highly contrived scenario(a shipwreck-ee who is not only a surgeon but a heroion smuggler) but this tale of cannibalism is so macabre it lingers long in the mind; and perhaps King's best ever short story - 'The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet', which combines paranoid conspiracy theories with a tale that cut's to the heart of the 'where do authors get their ideas from' question.

Make sure you read 'Night Shift' first, but if you're looking for more of King's shorts 'Skeleton Crew' comes an admirable second.