The Dead Zone – Stephen King, 1979 ★★★★½

Wake Me When It's 1975

This was the novel that started it all for Stephen King. It wasn’t his first book, nor his first great book, but it was the first King book to top The New York Times bestseller list, a feat he has repeated over 30 times since. It’s the book where his reign of terror really began.

People say King is a sloppy writer, an indifferent craftsman, that he goes for big scares and brand-name placement in place of things like tone and character. Yes, sometimes I am one of those people. But The Dead Zone forces a reappraisal. It has a powerful human intimacy, a sense of what makes people tick that makes for a very credible horror tale.

John Smith has a problem other people would kill for: An ability to see the future. Precognitive insight has been part of his life as long as he can remember; after a five-year coma it metastasizes to a point where he can discern the fates of other people by touching their hands.

The Shining – Stephen King, 1977 ★★★★

Not Better than the Film, Just Different

Some novels launch careers; others do more: They give birth to legends. There is no better example of this in my lifetime than The Shining.

Stephen King was already a successful novelist in 1977 when he took his first detour from eerie goings-on in Maine to introduce a spooky hotel in Colorado. Its success resounded first as a book, then as a movie, and finally as an urban legend. Everyone knows what goes on in The Shining – including things that don’t happen in the novel at all.

Different Seasons – Stephen King, 1982 ★★★★

Reclaiming the Lost Art of the Novella

During his first seven years as America’s biggest-selling author, Stephen King took readers into all kinds of forbidden, frightening territory. Haunted hotels, apocalyptic ruins, teenage hormones, he ran the gamut. In 1982, King ventured into a dead zone of a different kind: Novellas.

The Shawshank Redemption: A Shooting Script – Frank Darabont, 1996 ★★★½

Plotting for Hope

As revealed in the pages of this Newmarket Screenplay publication, the story of writer/director Frank Darabont resembled that of the protagonist of this, his breakout film, one Andy Dufresne. When you find yourself stuck in a hole, with everyone telling you there’s no way out, don’t give up hope.

Christine – Stephen King, 1983 ★★★½

Remembering My First Time with the King

Is Christine a clever chrome-plated gorefest a young and still-hungry Stephen King dashed off with deceptive ease? Or is it rather an early signpost of decline when the blockbuster horror writer was bottoming out on booze and coke?

Popular opinion favors the latter; I understand the argument. As for me, I love Christine.

This has little to do with it being a scary story about a demon car. For me, it’s something of a perverse nostalgia rush. I was in my last days of high school when I read this, my first King novel, and to say I related to the lead character, pathetic loser Arnie Cunningham, is an understatement. Every blow and insult directed at him echoed in my own memory well.

Needful Things – Stephen King, 1991 ★½

Let the Buyer Beware

Imagine a whole town crammed to the gills with Gollums; a countryside alive to the steady murmurings of “My precioussss” every evening as the lights go down. If that sort of thing impresses you as profound rather than monotonous, Stephen King has just the novel for you.

As the setting for several King novels and shorter stories, Castle Rock, Maine has seen a lot of crazy things. Now it’s Leland Gaunt’s turn to warp its reality.

Gaunt is the proprietor of a new store, “Needful Things,” a sort of curio shop offering offbeat merchandise catering to the special desires of a diverse array of local residents. The price is always right, too; just what the would-be buyer has in hand.

Gerald's Game – Stephen King, 1992 ★

Recalling a Forgotten King

Ever notice how so many fresh-looking but aged Stephen King hardcovers fill shelves at consignment shops?

It's fascinating, if you are a fan of King's like me, to note which novels they are. I never see the ones people talk about, like It or Misery. What I always see are those books he wrote between the late 1980s, when he was supposedly churning out manuscripts in a drug-induced frenzy, and 1999, when getting run over put him out of action for a while.

They are the King books Time forgot, books that cumulatively topped the best-seller lists for months but didn't become popular movies and which no one remembers outside of a few of his most loyal Constant Readers. Books like Gerald's Game.