Stephen King

American author Stephen King writes horror, suspense, fantasy, science fiction and crime fiction, often placing ordinary people under extraordinary pressure.

4 published books 0 published articles

Official website

About Stephen King

Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine, in 1947. He sold his first professional short story in 1967 and later taught high-school English while writing outside school hours. Doubleday's acceptance of Carrie in 1973 enabled him to become a full-time writer. His career spans novels, novellas and short stories across horror, suspense, fantasy, science fiction and crime.

King often begins with a recognizable community or family, then lets fear expose its weaknesses. The Shining traps the Torrance family inside the snowbound Overlook Hotel, where supernatural forces prey upon Jack's anger and addiction while his son Danny senses the danger. The Stand works on a much larger scale: after a lethal plague, survivors gather around Mother Abagail or Randall Flagg and struggle over what kind of society will follow.

His other major works include Carrie, It, Misery, Pet Sematary and the Dark Tower series. Many have been adapted for film or television. King received the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003 and the National Medal of Arts for 2014.

For a first book, choose The Shining. Its confined setting, small cast and steadily tightening pressure offer a direct introduction to King's gift for joining supernatural horror to damaged family relationships. Readers ready for a sprawling post-apocalyptic conflict should continue with The Stand.

Published books

Author

Carrie

Carrie is Stephen King's first published novel, a short, fast-moving horror story about Carrie White, a sixteen-year-old in Chamberlain, Maine. Bullied at school and dominated at home by a mother whose faith has curdled into cruelty, Carrie discovers she can move objects with her mind. A moment of apparent kindness and a humiliating prank on prom night turn that ability into catastrophe. King tells the story through a mosaic of narration, news reports, book excerpts and survivors' recollections, so the reader knows the outcome is disastrous long before it arrives. The result is as much a study of cruelty, shame and adolescence as a supernatural thriller, and it remains one of the most influential debut novels in modern horror.

View book

Author

Salem's Lot

'Salem's Lot is Stephen King's second published novel, a vampire story set in the fictional Maine town of Jerusalem's Lot. Writer Ben Mears returns to the hometown he left as a boy, hoping to finish a book about the decaying Marsten House that frightened him in childhood. He finds a place of gossip, quiet resentments and ordinary routines, then slowly realizes that something is feeding on it. King sets Bram Stoker's Dracula inside a believable American community, and the horror grows from how a town fails to notice its own destruction. It has also become one of the Stephen King books made into movies and television miniseries. It remains a foundational title for modern horror and for King's Maine fiction.

View book

Author

The Stand

After a lethal, laboratory-created influenza escapes military containment, the United States collapses with terrifying speed. The scattered survivors must first endure bereavement, isolation, and the hazards of an abandoned country; then shared dreams begin drawing them toward rival communities. In Boulder, Mother Abagail inspires an uncertain experiment in cooperation. In Las Vegas, Randall Flagg builds an authoritarian order based on fear and force. Following characters such as Stu Redman, Frannie Goldsmith, Larry Underwood, Nick Andros, and Harold Lauder, Stephen King combines plague narrative, road novel, social reconstruction, and supernatural conflict. The result is an expansive examination of what remains when institutions disappear—and how ordinary choices can become moral commitments.

View book

Author

The Shining

Jack Torrance takes a winter caretaking job at the isolated Overlook Hotel, hoping the quiet will help him rebuild his career and repair his damaged family. His wife, Wendy, wants to believe in that recovery, while their young son, Danny, senses what the adults cannot: the hotel retains the psychic traces of its violent past. Danny’s extraordinary gift—the “shining”—makes him especially valuable to the forces gathering around the family. As snow seals the hotel off from the outside world, the Overlook exploits Jack’s alcoholism, resentment, and fear of failure. King combines a haunted-building story with an intimate examination of addiction, domestic abuse, inherited trauma, and a child’s divided love for a dangerous parent.

View book