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The Ledge
Night Shift. A gambler makes a man an offer he can only collect by walking around the outside of a high-rise building. The physical details are what give the bargain its edge. Read it if you want a story in which a pigeon or a gust of wind can matter as much as the person who got you onto the ledge.
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Sometimes They Come Back
Night Shift. A teacher meets students who look like the boys who terrorized him when he was younger. King gives the past a place to sit and the teacher a reason to keep looking in its direction. Read it for a ghost story where the classroom matters as much as anything waiting outside.
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Strawberry Spring
Night Shift. A warm spell brings fog to a college campus, and the fog brings back memories of a string of killings. It’s an especially brief choice if you want the bad feeling to come from the narrator remembering certain things much more easily than others.
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Battleground
Night Shift. A hit man who killed a toymaker receives a package containing a small fighting force. The change of scale does most of the work. If you want King to set aside long explanations and get straight to an absurdly committed chase, this is a lively place to start.
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Trucks
Night Shift. People take refuge in a roadside diner after trucks begin moving without drivers. They have to watch something that should run out of fuel and stop. The story makes an everyday rest stop feel like an island, with unnerving questions about who may have to keep the machines supplied.
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Autopsy Room Four (2011)
10.0/10on Open Library
Published
Everything’s Eventual. A man realizes he’s still alive as he’s wheeled into an autopsy room, but he can’t move. You stay close enough to his thoughts to hear every wrong conclusion the attendants reach about him. It’s a tense, sometimes funny choice for a reader who can stand a bit of medical horror.
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All That You Love Will Be Carried Away (2010)
10.0/10on Open Library
Published
Everything’s Eventual. A traveling salesman checks into a Nebraska motel with a notebook of phrases he’s collected in public restrooms. The scraps have become the beginnings of something he might write. It’s a bleak, brief story about the difference a small amount of unfinished work can make to someone in despair.
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Everything's Eventual
Everything’s Eventual. A teenage pizza delivery worker takes a mysterious job that comes with far better conditions than he’s used to. Read it for the way somebody can make himself feel at home inside an arrangement he should question. The danger stays sharp because Dinky tells you how tempting it all felt.
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That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French
Everything’s Eventual. Carol keeps feeling she already knows what will happen next on a trip with her husband. The familiar details begin to matter because they return in a pattern. Read it for growing unease and an ending you can think about long after the last page.
More about That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French31
Lunch at the Gotham Cafe (2016)
10.0/10on Open Library
Published
Everything’s Eventual. A lunch in Manhattan gives a man a chance to see his estranged wife while he’s already struggling to stop smoking. It’s a good pick if you want familiar social discomfort to grow chaotic very quickly. Pay attention to how much of the tension is already at the table when the meal begins.
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Riding the Bullet (2000)
8.4/10on Open Library
Published
Everything’s Eventual. A student hitchhikes to the hospital after hearing his mother has had a stroke. Choose this for a roadside ghost story with a choice you can keep turning over after the ride is done. The urgency of getting there matters as much as who finally stops for him.
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Dolan's Cadillac (1989)
Published
Nightmares & Dreamscapes. A man spends years preparing to take revenge for his wife’s murder. King lets the work, delays, and preparation carry much of the suspense. Save this longer choice for when you want a crime story that makes you wonder how much of a life a plan can consume.
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Rainy Season (2016)
Published
Nightmares & Dreamscapes. The people in a small Maine town suggest a visiting couple leave before the rain comes. The story makes you wait for a reason that could justify the fuss. Pick it for a monster story that gets its start with advice you could easily brush off.
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Crouch End (2016)
Published
Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Two London police officers talk over a distraught woman’s report that her husband disappeared in Crouch End. Go here for an account that keeps its footing in familiar city streets until you realize why local knowledge can make the story harder to dismiss.
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Chattery Teeth (2016)
Published
Nightmares & Dreamscapes. A traveling salesman receives a set of novelty chattering teeth from a store clerk who says they’re broken. Save this for when a little amusement would make a roadside scare work better. The story makes that odd little purchase hard to stop thinking about.
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The End of the Whole Mess (2016)
Published
Nightmares & Dreamscapes. A man’s journal recounts his brother’s attempt to spread a chemical that might make people less hostile. Read it if you want an apocalypse told through one person’s account of trusting somebody he loves. The kindness of the intention makes what follows especially difficult to sit with.
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You Know They Got a Hell of a Band (2016)
Published
Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Two travelers get lost and reach a town where the residents look very familiar if you know old rock and roll. Go here for the queasy feeling of apparently affectionate nostalgia becoming the reason you might never get away. A place named Rock and Roll Heaven makes quite a promise.
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Umney's Last Case (1995)
2.0/10on Open Library
Published
Nightmares & Dreamscapes. A private eye is having an ordinary day in 1930s Los Angeles before a client arrives who claims to have written his life. Read it if you like a hard-boiled detective voice that can keep working after its own set of rules is dismantled. It’s an unusual way to spend time on both sides of a fictional world.
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The Night Flier (2016)
Published
Nightmares & Dreamscapes. A tabloid reporter follows reports of a strange airplane and deaths in small airports. Watch how his job teaches him to want one more detail when a sensible person might leave. It’s a good choice if you want supernatural horror with somebody nosy enough to go looking for it.
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Suffer the Little Children
Nightmares & Dreamscapes. A teacher begins to see something strange in her students after a boy tells her to expect trouble. The classroom rules are familiar enough to make her certainty frightening in its own right. Choose it when you want to question the perspective a story gives you, as well as what it shows.
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The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates
Just After Sunset. A widow gets a phone call from her husband after his death. The call has a little mundane confusion in it, which makes the voice hurt more than any elaborate explanation could. Try it when you want to finish with a small mystery that still feels open.
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