Product Description

What would you do if your everyday world were turned upside down in an instant? Here are thirteen riveting stories about relationships with unexpected twists. Be very careful what you wish for.

Read about the acts of kindness from strangers: ‘workmen’ who intervene in the obsessive exercise regime of a middle aged artist in Stationary Bike; the unexpected visitor, a blind girl, whose kiss saves a dying man; a mute hitchhiker who helps a driver get over his wife’s affair.

There are tales of obsession and fights for power: The Gingerbread Girl runs and runs to ease her pain; two neighbours contesting for a piece of land get into A Very Tight Place and a man who witnesses an act of domestic violence in a Rest Stop needs to step into his identity as a crime writer if he’s to intervene.

Then there are the unexpected outside events which turn people’s worlds upside down or the right way up: a young couple, David and Willa who are derailed on a train find themselves seeking the bright lights in a nearby town – and playing the jukebox, for eternity; an older couple want to punctuate the banal humdrum with something unusual – until it happens.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #200168 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-02
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Review

'King has the ability to capture the reader's imagination from the first page of each tale with his clever and terrifying storytelling. It is impossible to put the book down'

'Spooky, mysterious, gripping and satisfyingly scary'

'His most accomplished work: 13 beautifully turned tales, no two of which are alike'

'Nobody does it better than the master'

About the Author
King is the author of forty bestsellers, including MISERY and CELL. Some of his books have been turned into celebrated films including The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. He now divides his time between Maine and Florida.

Customer Reviews

Just read the whole book in 24 hours - excellent
I might be biased as I am a Stephen King fanatic but these are his best short stories yet. If you enjoy his work you will love these. If you are new to Stephen King and not sure if you will like his stuff then I would recommend this set of short stories as an introduction. As King is getting older (he turned 60 this year) these stories have a running theme throughout of mortality and what kind of afterlife there could possibly be (In stories such as Willa, The New York Times at Special Bargain rates). He also has an uplifting story about September 11th - someone who survived who was meant to be in the twin towers and how he comes to terms with this. The Gingerbread Girl I think is the best story in the book - I couldn't put it down until I'd finished - a woman who has lost a child starts running and just runs away from all her problems only to find a bigger problem where her running comes in handy.
I don't want to give too much away but other themes are mid-life crisis (Stationary Bike), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (N), a cat from hell (!) nuclear bombs, and a story involving a porta - loo.

If you are a SK fan you probably already bought this, if not buy it if you like short stories, buy it if you like weird and wacky and stories, uplifting stories and stories that cause you to question the world.

I got this book yesterday and just finished it as I couldn't put it down

Good, but not his best collection
'Just After Sunset' is the latest collection of short stories from the master of horror, Stephen King. This collection has a quite varied subject matter throughout the different stories, covering everything from kidnapping, obsessive compulsive disorder, 9/11, betrayal, a nuclear bomb, even an evil cat!

The standout stories for me in this collection were "N", which is a story about a psychologist who commits suicide and his sister reads his journals to find out why; "The Cat From Hell" whish is about a hitman who is hired to kill a cat; "Willa", a story about a man who is looking for his wife; "Rest Stop" which is about a man who hears a woman being abused in a pubic toilet; and my personal favourite "The Gingerbread Girl" which is about a woman who seperates from her husband and goes to live in her father's beach house but is then kidnapped by a rich psychopath.

This isn't the best collection of stories available from Mr King, especially when comparing it to the likes of Night Shift and Everything's Eventual but is well worth a read, especially if you're a fan of the horror and mystery genres - I would of preferred a new novel though to be honest. No doubt half of these will end up as TV films in the near future, but there are some good tales here, so I'll look forward to seeing them.

A mixed bag but overall good Stephen King
Stephen King's output has been a little patchy for the past few years. This has meant that whenever a new book of his comes out my first thoughts are 'is this going to be good Stephen King, okay Stephen King or just plain poor Stephen King?'

With Just after Sunset the answer to that question would be that it is all three - good, okay & poor.

Just after Sunset is a collection of 13 (a very bad number, according to a character in one of the tales) short stories. A few are not very good. I didn't like Harveys Dream, Graduation Afternoon or Willa. The latter is the weakest of the lot and as it is the first story it doesn't get the book off to a very promising start. A few are not bad. Not great, but okay. The Cat from Hell, Ayana and Stationary Bike come into this category. The majority though, are excellent, almost on a par with anything Stephen King as written previously. Gingerbread Girl, N, Rest Stop, Mute and A Very Tight Place are all excellent little stories. Most of these could have been puffed out and made into book sized novels but their sheer brevity makes them both punchy and powerful.

In the introduction, Stephen King tells us that writing short stories was an ability that at one time he had lost. Stephen Kings constant readers should be as pleased as I am that he has regained this ability.