Where to Start with Stephen King
You would be hard-pressed to find someone living in contemporary America who has not seen at least one film or television adaptation of Stephen King’s work. While horror films like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and Andy Muschietti’s It are instantly recognizable as Stephen King material, many movie fans are surprised to learn that Oscar-nominated films such as Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile are also adaptations of King’s fiction. Known primarily as the Master of Horror, King can surprise you with the versatility of his storytelling.
Although the following is primarily a reading list, we felt it prudent to mention that the films of King’s career are almost inextricably linked to his career as an author. His work is a constant source of inspiration for filmmakers and artists, with the appearance of a new movie or TV series adaptation every few years. Many of these films have become classics in their own right (Carrie, The Shining, Pet Sematary), and it’s safe to assume that many readers have probably seen at least one King-based film adaptation before deciding to turn to King’s fiction.
With at least 90 novels and more than 200 short stories under his belt, Stephen King has a bibliography that can look very intimidating to new readers. But fear not! We’re here to guide you on where to start! Even if you are not a horror fan, we’re sure one of these titles will end up on your favorite reads list. (All summaries adapted from the publisher.)
A Brief History of Stephen King's Life (so far)
Stephen Edwin King was born in Maine in 1947. This is important to know, as many of King’s stories take place in fictional towns in his home state. The Shining and Misery are a couple of his well-known novels based instead in Colorado, where King and his family also lived for a time.
Growing up, King was a fan of classic horror writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, and horror comics like Tales from the Crypt, which he later paid homage to in his screenplay for the film Creepshow. King wrote short stories for fanzines throughout his youth, but it was not until 1967 that he sold his first story, The Glass Floor, to a published magazine, Startling Mystery Stories.
King met his wife Tabitha while they were students working at the Folger Library at the University of Maine. They married in 1971, and are still married to this day. Tabitha is also a novelist and has continuously supported her husband’s career. As newlyweds, the couple struggled to make ends meet, with King taking odd jobs and selling short stories to support their growing family. It was while living in a trailer that King finished what would become his first published novel, Carrie. According to King, he initially threw out his manuscript for Carrie, but Tabitha saved it and encouraged him to finish.
Carrie was published in 1973 and became a bestseller. In 1976, the film version, directed by Brian De Palma, was released and is now considered a horror film classic. King's career flourished from that point on, with movie adaptations following closely behind his latest book releases.
Many of his characters either suffer from substance abuse or deal with the repercussions of living with addiction. This stems from King's own experience. He developed a severe drug addiction in the 1980s, which coincided with the release of some of his most popular novels. According to King in his memoir, On Writing, his addiction was so severe, he hardly remembers writing Cujo. His family staged an intervention in the late 80s, and King has been sober ever since. Needful Things is the first novel he published after becoming sober.
In 1999, King was hit by a van and survived despite severe injuries. He published his memoir On Writing while recovering.
King has continuously published new material ever since Carrie’s publication, sometimes under his pen name, Richard Bachman. Under the Bachman name, King released several manuscripts he worked on before Carrie including The Long Walk and Rage. His son, Joseph Hillstrom King, also publishes horror under the pen name Joe Hill. King and Hill have collaborated on several short story collections. In 2017, King collaborated on the novel, Sleeping Beauties, with his other son, Owen King. Stephen King's latest novel, The Institute, was released this year to rave reviews.
King has won a multitude of awards including the American Library Association award for Best Books for Young Adults, first for 'Salem's Lot in 1978 and again for Firestarter in 1981.
If you ever go to a Boston Red Sox baseball game, you might catch a glimpse of King in the stands, as he is a huge fan. His love for the Red Sox was transplanted into his novel The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and a cameo in the Jimmy Fallon-Drew Barrymore movie, Fever Pitch. (Coincidentally, the 1984 film adaptation of Firestarterstarred a young Drew Barrymore.) Much like Stan Lee, King often appears in film adaptations of his work (and sometimes other media), so keep an eye out for him!
Where to Start
If you want to get a taste for King's style, we recommend checking out a collection of his short stories or one of his novellas. If you are looking for full-length novels, consider that Carrie and The Long Walk were both written at the start of his career, while Misery and Pet Semetary were released at the height of his popularity in the 1980s.
The following novels occupy a shared universe and are pretty hefty reads for King beginners: Hearts in Atlantis, Desperation, It, Dreamcatcher, Duma Key, The Stand, The Tommyknockers, Rose Madder, Insomnia, and The Dark Tower series. The novel, Doctor Sleep, is a sequel to The Shining. The Mr. Mercedes trilogy consists of Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch.
Many are tempted to start by reading It and The Stand due to their popularity (The Stand is largely considered to be King's magnum opus). Keep in mind that both novels are near 1,000 pages and require a great deal of commitment to properly enjoy them. For that reason, we recommend beginners start with one of King’s shorter novels and then work up to the larger ones—and we've even categorized his work below by length for this reason.
Please also bear in mind that King is the Master of Horror for a reason. Some of his work features topics that readers may find triggering or simply distasteful. When in doubt, please contact your nearest librarian for assistance. With that, we wish you luck with your trip into the macabre, grotesque, and horrifying world of Stephen King.
Stephen King Novellas and Short Story Collections
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams
By Stephen King
Since his first collection, Nightshift, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. In this new collection he assembles, for the first time, recent stories that have never been published in a book. He introduces each with a passage about its origins or his motivations for writing it. There are thrilling connections between stories; themes of morality, the afterlife, guilt, and what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past.
Different Seasons
By Stephen King
A "hypnotic" (The New York Times Book Review) collection of four novellas from Stephen King, bound together by the changing of seasons, each taking on the theme of a journey with strikingly different tones and characters.
This gripping collection begins with Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, in which an unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge—the basis for Best Picture Academy Award-nominee The Shawshank Redemption. Next is Apt Pupil, the inspiration for the film of the same name about top high school student Todd Bowden, and his obsession with the dark and deadly past of an older man in town.
In The Body, four rambunctious young boys plunge through the facade of a small town and come face-to-face with life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. This novella became the movie Stand By Me. Finally, a disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death in The Breathing Method.
Four Past Midnight: Stories
By Stephen King
One Past Midnight: The Langoliers takes a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Boston into a most unfriendly sky. Only 11 passengers survive, but landing in an eerily empty world makes them wish they hadn’t. Because something’s waiting for them.
Two Past Midnight: Secret Window, Secret Garden enters the suddenly strange life of writer Mort Rainey, recently divorced, depressed, and alone on the shore of Tashmore Lake. Alone, that is, until a figure named John Shooter arrives, pointing an accusing finger.
Three Past Midnight: The Library Policeman is set in Junction City, Iowa, an unlikely place for evil to be hiding. But for small businessman Sam Peebles, who thinks he may be losing his mind, another enemy is hiding there as well—the truth. If he can find it in time, he might stand a chance.
Four Past Midnight: The Sun Dog is a menacing canine appearing in every Polaroid picture that 15-year-old Kevin Delevan takes with his new camera, beckoning him to the supernatural. Old Pop Merrill, Castle Rock’s sharpest trader, aims to exploit it for profit, but this creature that shouldn’t exist at all is a very dangerous investment.
Full Dark, No Stars
By Stephen King
In four previously unpublished short works, a man explores his dark nature, a writer confronts a stranger, a cancer patient makes a deal with the devil, and a woman makes a horrifying discovery about her husband.
Full Throttle: Stories
By Joe Hill and Stephen King
In this masterful collection of short fiction, Joe Hill dissects timeless human struggles in 13 relentless tales of supernatural suspense, including In The Tall Grass, one of two stories co-written with Stephen King, and basis for the terrifying feature film from Netflix.
A little door that opens to a world of fairy-tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in Faun. A grief-stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in Late Returns. In By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain, two young friends stumble on the corpse of a plesiosaur at the water's edge, a discovery that forces them to confront the inescapable truth of their own mortality, and other horrors that lurk in the water's shivery depths. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in Throttle, also co-written with Stephen King.
Nightmares & Dreamscapes
By Stephen King
A wrong turn on a lonely road lands a wayward couple in Rock and Roll Heaven, Oregon, where there’s no escaping the free nightly concert… a novelty toy becomes an unexpected and terrifying instrument of self-defense… an ex-con pieces together a map to unearth a stolen million dollars—but at what price?… a private investigator in Depression-era Los Angeles finds his life unraveling as he discovers the shocking truth of who he really is… a third-grade teacher is willing to dig deep to exact revenge for his murdered wife…
These are just some of the haunting scenarios to be found in this classic collection—spellbinding tales from the darkest places and the unparalleled imagination of fiction’s master storyteller.
Night Shift
By Stephen King
King’s first collection of stories is an early showcase of the depths that his wicked imagination could plumb. In these 20 tales, we see mutated rats gone bad (Graveyard Shift); a cataclysmic virus that threatens humanity (Night Surf, the basis for The Stand); a smoker who will try anything to stop (Quitters, Inc.); a reclusive alcoholic who begins a gruesome transformation (Gray Matter); and many more.
Skeleton Crew: Stories
By Stephen King
A supermarket becomes the place where humanity makes its last stand against destruction. A trip to the attic becomes a journey to hell. A woman driving a Jaguar finds a scary shortcut to paradise. An idyllic lake harbors a bottomless evil. And a desert island is the scene of the most terrifying struggle for survival ever waged.
King is best known for his iconic, immersive long novels, but he is also a master of the short story, and this is a magnificent collection.
Stephen King Novels of 500 or Fewer Pages
Carrie
By Stephen King
A 16-year-old misfit, denied everything by her fanatical mother and abused by her classmates, unleashes her terrifying telekinetic powers on an entire town.
Cujo: A Novel
By Stephen King
Outside a peaceful town in central Maine, a monster is waiting. Cujo is a 200-pound Saint Bernard, the best friend Brett Camber has ever had. One day, Cujo chases a rabbit into a cave inhabited by sick bats and emerges as something new altogether.
Meanwhile, Vic and Donna Trenton, and their young son Tad, move to Maine. They are seeking peace and quiet, but life in this small town is not what it seems. As Tad tries to fend off the terror that comes to him at night from his bedroom closet, and as Vic and Donna face their own nightmare of a marriage on the rocks, there is no way they can know that a monster, infinitely sinister, waits in the daylight.
What happens to Cujo, how he becomes a horrifying vortex inescapably drawing in all the people around him, makes for one of the most heart-stopping novels Stephen King has ever written.
The Dead Zone
By Stephen King
Johnny Smith awakens from a five-year coma after his car accident and discovers he can see people’s futures and pasts when he touches them. Many consider his talent a gift; Johnny feels cursed. His fiancée married another man during his coma and people clamor for him to solve their problems.
When Johnny has a disturbing vision after he shakes the hand of an ambitious and amoral politician, he must decide if he should take drastic action to change the future.
Firestarter
By Stephen King
Young Charlie McGee is a very special girl. The result of scientific experimentation on her parents, she has the ability to create fires wherever and whenever she chooses, by force of will alone. On the run from sinister government agents with her telekenetic father, she only wants to forget her monstrous abilities, and live a normal life.
When the pair are captured, Charlie must decide between saving her father and using her fiery powers at the whim of a government only interested in using her… as a weapon!
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: A Novel
By Stephen King
During a six-mile hike on the Maine-New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Trail, nine-year-old Trisha McFarland quickly tires of the constant bickering between her older brother and her recently divorced mother. When Trisha briefly wanders off by herself, she becomes lost in a wilderness maze full of peril and terror.
As night falls, Trisha has only her ingenuity as a defense against the elements, and only her courage and faith to withstand her mounting fears. For solace, she tunes her headphones to broadcasts of Boston Red Sox baseball games and follows the gritty performances of her hero, relief pitcher Tom Gordon. When the reception begins to fade, Trisha imagines that Tom Gordon is right there with her—the protector from an enemy who may or may not be imagined… one who is watching her, waiting for her in the dense, dark woods…
The Green Mile
By Stephen King
In the Old South of the 1930s, when a gentle giant of a man is sentenced to death for the murder and rape of two little girls, the fact that he is black and the girls are white is inflammatory enough—but the situation is further complicated by his near muteness and gift for healing.
The Long Walk: A Novel
By Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman
In an ultraconservative America of the not-too-distant future, in which the country has become a police state, the annual marathon is the ultimate sports competition. One hundred boys are selected each year to enter a grueling 450-mile marathon walk. The game is simple: maintain a steady walking pace of four miles per hour without stopping. Three warnings and you're out—permanently. The winner will be awarded whatever he wants for the rest of his life; but a single misstep could be the last.
Misery: A Novel
By Stephen King
Paul Sheldon is a bestselling novelist who has finally met his number one fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes, and she is more than a rabid reader—she is Paul’s nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also furious that the author has killed off her favorite character in his latest book. Annie becomes his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house.
Annie wants Paul to write a book that brings the character Misery back to life—just for her. She has a lot of ways to spur him on. One is a needle. Another is an axe. And if they don’t work, she can get really nasty.
The Running Man
By Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman
"Tomorrow at noon, the hunt begins. Remember his face!"
Ben Richards is a desperate man. With no job, no money, no way out, and a young daughter in need of proper medical attention, he must turn to the only possibility of striking it rich in this near-future dystopian America: participating in the ultra-violent TV programming of the government-sanctioned Games Network. Ben soon finds himself selected as a contestant on the biggest and the best the Games Network has to offer: "The Running Man," a no-holds-barred 30-day struggle to stay alive as public enemy number one, relentlessly hunted by an elite strike force bent on killing him as quickly as possible in front of an audience all-too eager to see that happen. It means a billion dollars in prize money if he can live for the next month. No one has ever survived longer than eight days. But desperation can push a person do things they never thought possible—and Ben Richards is willing to go the distance in this ultimate game of life and death…
Stephen King Novels of 500-1,000 Pages
The Institute: A Novel
By Stephen King
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load Luke into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and 10-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, "like the roach motel," Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.
As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King’s gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don’t always win.
Mr. Mercedes: A Novel
By Stephen King
In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, hundreds of desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed, 15 are wounded. The killer escapes.
In another part of town, months later, a retired cop named Bill Hodges is still haunted by the unsolved crime. When he gets a crazed letter from someone who self-identifies as the "perk" and threatens an even more diabolical attack, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on preventing another tragedy.
Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again. Only Bill Hodges, with a couple of highly unlikely allies, can apprehend the killer before he strikes again. And they have no time to lose, because Brady's next mission, if it succeeds, will kill or maim thousands.
Needful Things: A Novel
By Stephen King
The town of Castle Rock, Maine has seen its fair share of oddities over the years, but nothing is as peculiar as the little curio shop that’s just opened for business here. Its mysterious proprietor, Leland Gaunt, seems to have something for everyone out on display at Needful Things… interesting items that run the gamut from worthless to priceless. Nothing has a price tag in this place, but everything is certainly for sale.
The heart’s desire for any resident of Castle Rock can easily be found among the curiosities… in exchange for a little money and—at the specific request of Leland Gaunt—a whole lot of menace against their fellow neighbors. Everyone in town seems willing to make a deal at Needful Things, but the devil is in the details. And no one takes heed of the little sign hanging on the wall: Caveat emptor. In other words, let the buyer beware…
Pet Sematary: A Novel
By Stephen King
When Dr. Louis Creed takes a new job and moves his family to the idyllic rural town of Ludlow, Maine, this new beginning seems too good to be true. Despite Ludlow’s tranquility, an undercurrent of danger exists here. Those trucks on the road outside the Creeds’ beautiful old home travel by just a little too quickly, for one thing… as is evidenced by the makeshift graveyard in the nearby woods where generations of children have buried their beloved pets.
Then there are the warnings to Louis, both real and from the depths of his nightmares, that he should not venture beyond the borders of this little graveyard where another burial ground lures with seductive promises and ungodly temptations. A blood-chilling truth is hidden there—one more terrifying than death itself, and hideously more powerful. As Louis is about to discover for himself, sometimes, dead is better…
The Outsider
By Stephen King
An unspeakable crime. A confounding investigation. At a time when the Stephen King brand has never been stronger, he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories. An 11-year-old boy's violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City's most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad. As the investigation expands and horrifying answers begin to emerge, King's propulsive story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can.
'Salem's Lot
By Stephen King
'Salem's Lot is a small New England town with white clapboard houses, tree-lined streets, and solid church steeples. That summer in 'Salem's Lot was a summer of homecoming and return; spring burned out and the land lying dry, crackling underfoot. Late that summer, Ben Mears returned to 'Salem's Lot hoping to cast out his own devils and found instead a new, unspeakable horror.
A stranger had also come to the Lot, a stranger with a secret as old as evil, a secret that would wreak irreparable harm on those he touched and in turn on those they loved.
All would be changed forever: Susan, whose love for Ben could not protect her; Father Callahan, the bad priest who put his eroded faith to one last test; and Mark, a young boy who sees his fantasy world become reality and ironically proves the best equipped to handle the relentless nightmare of 'Salem's Lot.
The Shining
By Stephen King
Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote… and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old.
Sleeping Beauties: A Novel
By Stephen King and Owen King
In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep: they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent. And while they sleep they go to another place, a better place, where harmony prevails and conflict is rare. One woman, the mysterious "Eve Black," is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Eve a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain?
Abandoned, left to their increasingly primal urges, the men divide into warring factions, some wanted to kill Eve, some to save her. Others exploit the chaos to wreak their own vengeance on new enemies. All turn to violence in a suddenly all-male world. Set in a small Appalachian town whose primary employer is a woman’s prison, Sleeping Beauties is a wildly provocative, gloriously dramatic father-son collaboration that feels particularly urgent and relevant today.
Stephen King Novels Longer than 1,000 Pages
It: A Novel
By Stephen King
It began—and ended—in 1958 when seven children searched in the drains beneath Derry for an evil creature. But in 1985, Mike, once one of those children, makes six phone calls and disinters an unremembered promise that sets off the ultimate terror.
11/22/63: A Novel
By Stephen King
On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? In this novel that's a tribute to a simpler era, King sweeps readers back in time to another moment, a real-life moment, when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history.
Jake Epping is a 35-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students, a gruesome, harrowing first-person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning's father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.
Not much later, Jake's friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane, and insanely possible, mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake's new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald, and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake's life, a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.
The Stand: A Novel
By Stephen King
After a virus kills most people in the world, a handful of survivors choose sides—a world of good led by 108-year-old Mother Abigail—or evil led by a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.
Under the Dome: A Novel
By Stephen King
The small town of Chester's Mill, Maine, is faced with a big dilemma when it is mysteriously sealed off by an invisible and completely impenetrable force field. With cars and airplanes exploding on contact, the force field has completely isolated the townspeople from the outside world. Now, Iraq war vet Dale Barbara and a group of the town's more sensible citizens must overcome the tyrannical rule of Big Jim Rennie, a politician bent on controlling everything within the Dome.
Stephen King Memoir
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
By Stephen King
Stephen King reflects on how his writing has helped him through difficult times and describes various aspects of the art of writing.