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Stephen King writes big books.
One of his own villains could probably beat someone to death with them.
But not all of his stories are of lethal heft.
In a 50-year career, King has written copious amounts of short fiction.
What if a single prophetic dream ruined your life?
What if there was someone who could answer any question you had?
What if the ghosts of little boys demanded you be their daddy?
To celebrate the new release, weve put together a list of Kings best short fiction.
The story must be included in a major collection, so readers can easily find it.
And it must be a short story rather than a novella.
The stories are unranked, instead listed by the date of collection.
you’ve got the option to decide which of the below is your favorite.
Theres a lot to enjoy, regardless of your tastes.
Some what ifs can be gentler, magical … even kind.
Mostly not, though.
Graveyard Shift is one of the earliest and best.
Its a straightforward creature feature about the monstrous vermin awaiting a cleaning crew in a dilapidated textile mill.
Graveyard Shift is an early gem that presages Kings future success in combining muscular realism and genre madness.
A cruel story, but subtler than you might expect.
Well, it has a grain of truth.
This story shouldnt work.
It should be too ridiculous.
), King pulls it off.
Alone under 70 million acres of blue sky.
When a bickering couple stray into that agoraphobic nightmare they disturb decades of lore and perverted Old Testament sentiment.
King packs a whole novels worth of story into just a few dozen pages.
An averted disaster becomes a metaphor for both their bond, and the tragedy of its severing.
The back roads to Salems Lot, however, remain less well-traveled.
Novelty is part of what makes One for the Road so satisfying.
A rare chance to see what became of the vampire-infested Lot.
But the story also succeeds on its own merits.
The ensuing trip back to Kings most blighted town is a perfect coda to his early classic novel.
For good reason too.
Few concepts in Kings entire catalogue are as existentially sickening as the terrible and temporal pitfalls of teleportation.
The Jaunt hits you twice.
Its a sick, sick joke of a story that the healthy mind cant dwell on too long.
But its still funny.
Its one of Kings purest horror stories and it goes so much harder than you probably remember.
Usually, there be dragons.
I wont say whether it does or not, as its too finely tightened a knot to spoil.
Decades later, Holly Gibney and theMr.
Theres something Im not telling you here, and its a whole other delicious twist to what if.
But its that first sight of the finger tapping on porcelain that lasts.
Crouch End,Nightmares and Dreamscapes(1993)
The influence of H.P.
Lovecraft on Kings work cannot be overstated.
Its there in the ageless otherness of Pennywise the Clown and the shambling horrors waiting inThe Mist.
Its a story entirely without embellishment, but one of the meanest, leanest entries in Kings 21st-century oeuvre.
What awaits is Kings take on the meeting-with-the-devil story.
The Man in the Black Suit won both the O. Henry and World Fantasy Awards, and deservedly so.
What begins with strangely canted architecture becomes a full-frontal demonic attack on reality.
1408 is a story only someone as established and unrestricted as King could get away with.
Its easily Kings scariest short ghost story.
N,Just After Sunset(2008)
N is Kings most sophisticated short horror story.
Its an absolute masterclass in slowly crystalizing terror, clearly an inspiration for the hithorror movieSmile.Kings story is better.
This time the question is what if you were trapped in a porta-potty on a very hot day?
The answer is as claustrophobic and shit-smeared as you would imagine.
you’re free to almost smell this story.
Sandersons weekly lunches with his deteriorating father are a dreary cycle of menu choices and conversational cul-de-sacs.
You realize King has been placing the details carefully all along, like tiles in a mosaic.
Its only when you step back that you see the purpose of it all.
Maybe its the father showing the son how its really done.
Each of its three acts is anchored in a period in the life of Charles Chuck Krantz.
An early haunting experience in Chucks grandparents house reads like vintage King.
It should be splendid.
It would be a crime to spoil it.
Equally, snakes are not as big a threat in the story as you may expect.
This is one of his most striking engagements with the malign supernatural in quite some time.
The Answer Man is very much of that brotherhood.
