I want to read the best Stephen King novels, novellas, and short stories

[Yavin4]

Give me the best starting point and list out his best. Thanks in advance.

p.s. I've read The Stand and The Shining but I don't mind re-reading.

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. for me

Salems Lot
Carrie
Pet Semetary
Duma Key ( loved it!)
Night Shift short stories
The Talisman
11/22/63
The Outsider

[Tikki]

7. Salem's Lot....for sure.

Tikki

[Bleacher Creature]

9. That movie freaked me out when I was a kid! NT

[Tikki]

10. Book freaked me out... I remember reading chapters and throwing the book across...

the room before picking it up again to read.

The TV movie was one of the better adaptions of his works and YES...very, very scary.


Tikki

[PoiBoy]

2. Stephen King has so many good ones...

...one of my current favorites is Insomnia.. very interesting storyline IMO...

[fleur-de-lisa]

3. If you liked The Shining

I would recommend the sequel Doctor Sleep, in which Danny is an adult.

Other favorites of mine are Bag of Bones and Insomnia.

[Niagara]

4. Sometimes, it helps to look for books under Richard Bachman

This is Stephen's pseudonym that he used to write Thinner and Rage.



Some of my favorites are Carrie, Christine, Cujo, Misery, Rose Madder and Salem's Lot.

[Aristus]

5. He's got a jillion short stories.

But one of my favorites is The Doctor's Case, King's excellent little addition to the Sherlock Holmes canon. It's an ingenious story, well in the mode of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It's in his 'Nightmares And Dreamscapes' collection.

[Dave Starsky]

17. Night Shift and Skeleton Crew are his best short-story collections, IMHO.

But I haven't read either in a long time, so maybe they're dated. All I know is that I still think about those stories.

[demigoddess]

6. Delores Claiborne.

IT, Lisey's Story.

[JustGene]

8. Dark Tower Series

After everything else.
This grabbed me more than even the Bachman stuff.
My wife is not a fan, though she's S.K.'s #1 cheerleader

[Glorfindel]

11. Some of his novellas are absolutely superb

"Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" from his collection Different Seasons
"The Body" (the movie "Stand by Me" is based on this one) also from Different Seasons
"The Sun Dog" scared me more than any other King work - so far - from Four Past Midnight

Novels:

"The Green Mile" - originally published in six paperbacks
"The Dead Zone"
"Needful Things"

I just today received his latest collection, "If It Bleeds" and started on the first story.

[MuseRider]

12. You are in for years of treats!

I would start with the first book and read until you are done. I only missed Pet Sematary and Cujo because the animal stuff bugs me and there were a few cases where I had to skip a bit. I have been reading him almost from the beginning and I would say that a few books I was not actually crazy about but almost 100% gave me such a great read. I just hate to read something and find out it was book 2 or 3 of a series so I always look up and make sure I was not reading out of order. I could not even begin to answer your question but I will say I absolutely adored his collections of short stories or novellas. Dear Reader, his personal note to just you are a very nice touch too.

[sarge43]

13. The Dead Zone

Then, check out the film.

[SinisterPants]

14. I love so many King novels, it's easier to tell you which to avoid...

#1: Dreamcatcher. Two words, shit weasels, says it all, and no, you really DON'T want to know. Just irredeemably bad.

#2: End of Watch. the conclusion to the mediocre series that began with Mr. Mercedes. This feels like he phoned it in to pay the bills.

#3:Eyes of the Dragon. His only attempt at high fantasy before he figured it out in the gunslinger series. This feels like Richard Bachman trying to imitate Tolkien. It doesn't work.

#4: The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon. Nothing particularly wrong with the writing here, it's just a short story that got jumped up to novel length, and most of the time you are wondering if anything is EVER going to happen.

#5: The Talisman (with Peter Straub). Two great authors, interesting premise, but what should have been peanut butter and jelly read more like...peanut butter and mustard? The styles just never meshed, there are some individual great scenes, but as a novel it just didn't work.

#6: From a Buick 8. It had to happen with that many books under his belt, here King blatantly rips off his own Christine (which was also pretty mediocre)

#7: Anything written as Richard Bachman. This is a bit controversial, some people love them, I don't. There are far better hard-boiled writers out there, some are just cheap and derivative, some (most especially Rage) are downright disgusting.

That's all I can think of for the real stinkers, I'd echo most of the rec's you got for good ones, esp. the Dark Tower series. Epic in every sense.

I really envy you reading some of these for the first time. Enjoy!

[bedazzled]

15. Danse macabre is good also

Stephen king discusses the horror genre in all media. 'Tis great. I like "stand" best and "green mile."

[Dave Starsky]

16. That is the best, most entertaining book on horror writing ever produced.

And probably one of the best books on fiction writing, as well.

What can I say? The dude obviously "gets it".

[bedazzled]

18. He is the BEST TEACHER isn't he

I would love to meet him...

[Totally Tunsie]

19. Misery, for sure.

It starts out so gently, and then...uh ohhhh. It's scary because it's all so possible.

Also loved Gerald's Game.

Gerald's Game is a 1992 suspense novel by American writer Stephen King. The story is about a woman whose husband dies of a heart attack while she is handcuffed to a bed, and, following the subsequent realization that she is trapped with little hope of rescue, begins to let the voices inside her head take over.

...and then there's this dog.

[skypilot]

20. Best starting point...

...would be Carrie which was his first published work. It is only a little under 250 pages but there is a lot of story packed in there.

On edit: I think that a lot of people (even King fans) never bothered to read Carrie because they saw the movie first but, of course, there is much in the book that isn't in the movie.