Product Description

A solitary finger pokes out of a drain. Novelty teeth turn predatory. The Nevada desert swallows a Cadillac. This collection of Stephen King stories takes a roller-coaster ride through the macabre and monstrous, via explorations of good and evil.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #322618 in Books
• Published on: 1994-10-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 864 pages

Sunday Telegraph
'A bumper collection of short stories … You can't help admiring King's narrative skills and his versatility as a story-teller'

Review
'Good anthology of short stories from the horror supremo, mixing the odd, macabre and creepy' (Daily Mail )

'A bumper collection of short stories … You can't help admiring King's narrative skills and his versatility as a story-teller' (Sunday Telegraph )

'Merely by tickling the keys on his word processor King can make flesh creep half a world away. But where he differs from so many chill merchants is that his horror is rarely gratuitous and often informed with a wry humour that is unmistakably contemporary rather than Gothic' (The Times )

About the Author
Stephen King is the bestselling author of more than thirty books of which the most recent are THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON and HEARTS IN ATLANTIS. He lives with his wife, the novelist Tabitha King, in Bangor, Maine.

Customer Reviews

Small is good
My favourite tale is probably Crouch End - a town, or more precisely Slaughter Towen - a macabre little tale about a place that used to exist that a couple of tourists come across one night, the main problem being it was a town believed to be full of black magic and sacrifice. The tourist's husband investigates a strange noise behind a bush and next news he's gone. She wanders into the local police station where they don't seem really surprised about what's happened, one of them goes to look for him...
The best little story I've read.
Chattery teeth - out of the Twilight Zone came, jumbo teeth!
A man goes into a service station and they have a joke rack - on the joke rack are the biggest pair of walking teeth he has ever seen, he gets them for his son, he also picks up a hitchhiker.
The hitchhiker decides he's easy game and wants to rob him and take his car - the teeth, which according to the store owner have never really worked swing into action - they drag this guy out into the desert and eat him!
There are tooooo many good stories here to mention - no King collection would be complete without it. On saying that though I think any horror reader would love it, if you don't feel up to some of the phone book sized novels he has written.
Fabulous!
Each story a nugget of horror wisdom in easily digestable parts!

Not the best collection- a few gems
This was the first short story collection of SK I read. The stories vary so much in content and quality that there is something to please- and displease- everyone.
Whilst some of the stories are typical King style, there are others which I just didn't 'get'; It Grows On You, for instance. My favourite story was Chattery Teeth- I think it was the spats that got me! I also got very involved in Dolan's Cadillac, a fine story of retribution which shows us that revenge is truly a dish best eaten cold. Crouch End was short, bizarre and effectively conveyed the fear of being lost in a new place. It read like a drive through some of the housing estates I have visited actually!
In short, for every gem there's one I didn't enjoy much or didn't 'get'. I had little or no idea of what My Pretty Pony was about, and still don't. The notes at the back by Mr King, explaining how each story came to being, is a good insightful read.
If I have made this book sound not worth buying, I take it back; there are some classics in here, just a few duds too. Buy it, even if its just to find out what the Chattery Teeth did...

Nightmarish - but in a good way.
Stephen King excels - he seems unable to do otherwise - in this collection of short stories. They range in style as well as content, from his own contemporary conversational tone to an imitation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Raymond Chandler. The notes at the back of the book, which explain why exactly he chose to write each story, are interesting for writers and readers alike - although, in the prologue, he does warn that reading these notes might spoil the enjoyment of the stories because knowing how a magician performs his tricks makes the trick seem less magical. They didn't spoil it for me, though - once again, King has written a masterpiece - in fact, a collection of them.