This book surveys the labyrinthine relationship between Stephen King and American History. By depicting American History as a doomed cycle of greed and violence, King poses a number of important questions: who gets to make history, what gets left out, how one understands one's role within it, and how one might avoid repeating mistakes of the past. This volume examines King's relationship to American History through the illumination of metanarratives, adaptations, "queer" and alternative historical lenses, which confront the destructive patterns of our past as well as our capacity to imagine a different future. Stephen King and American History will present readers with an opportunity to place popular culture in conversation with the pressing issues of our day. If we hope to imagine a different path forward, we will need to come to terms with this enclosure—a task for which King's corpus is uniquely well-suited.

This is the very first study dedicated exclusively to politics in Stephen King’s fiction. It is a window into the turbulent political climate of the U.S. today (via popular culture). It is an exciting conversation between major political theorists and America’s most popular purveyor of horror

Fascinating facts, trivia, and little-known details about the Master of the Macabre’s life from the “world’s leading authority on Stephen King” (Entertainment Weekly). New York Times–bestselling author Stephen Spignesi has compiled interviews, essays, and loads of facts and details about all of Stephen King’s work into this fun and informative compendium for the author’s many fans, from the casual to the fanatical! Did you know. . . ? In his early teens, Stephen King sold typed copies of his short stories at school. King originally thought his novel Pet Sematary was too frightening to publish. King’s legendary Dark Tower series took him more than 30 years to write. Thinner was the novel that revealed his “Richard Bachman” pseudonym to the world. King wrote The Eyes of the Dragon for his daughter Naomi. He has never liked Stanley Kubrick’s film version of his novel The Shining. It took him four years to write what some consider his magnum opus, IT. The 2017 film version of IT has grossed more than $700 million worldwide. In addition to novels, King has written essays, plays, screenplays, and even poetry.

A monumentally devastating plague leaves only a few survivors who, while experiencing dreams of a battle between good and evil, move toward an actual confrontation as they migrate to Boulder, Colorado.

One of the very first books to take Stephen King seriously, Landscape of Fear (originally published in 1988) reveals the source of King's horror in the sociopolitical anxieties of the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era. In this groundbreaking study, Tony Magistrale shows how King's fiction transcends the escapism typical of its genre to tap into our deepest cultural fears: "that the government we have installed through the democratic process is not only corrupt but actively pursuing our destruction, that our technologies have progressed to the point at which the individual has now become expendable, and that our fundamental social institutions-school, marriage, workplace, and the church-have, beneath their veneers of respectability, evolved into perverse manifestations of narcissism, greed, and violence." Tracing King's moralist vision to the likes of Twain, Hawthorne, and Melville, Landscape of Fear establishes the place of this popular writer within the grand tradition of American literature. Like his literary forbears, King gives us characters that have the capacity to make ethical choices in an imperfect, often evil world. Yet he inscribes that conflict within unmistakably modern settings. From the industrial nightmare of "Graveyard Shift" to the breakdown of the domestic sphere in The Shining, from the techno-horrors of The Stand to the religious fanaticism and adolescent cruelty depicted in Carrie, Magistrale charts the contours of King's fictional landscape in its first decade.

Collection of 23 short stories--from classic horror to vampire thrillers, imitations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler, a teleplay, and a non-fiction bonus, a heartfelt little piece on Little League baseball.

Tony Magistrale explores many of the movie versions of Stephen King's works and provides important insights into both the films and the fiction on which they are based.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY MARGARET ATWOOD • Stephen King's legendary debut, the bestselling smash hit that put him on the map as one of America's favorite writers • In a world where bullies rule, one girl holds a secret power. Unpopular and tormented, Carrie White's life takes a terrifying turn when her hidden abilities become a weapon of horror. “A master storyteller.” —The Los Angeles Times • “Guaranteed to chill you.” —The New York Times • "Gory and horrifying. . . . You can't put it down." —Chicago Tribune Unpopular at school and subjected to her mother's religious fanaticism at home, Carrie White does not have it easy. But while she may be picked on by her classmates, she has a gift she's kept secret since she was a little girl: she can move things with her mind. Doors lock. Candles fall. Her ability has been both a power and a problem. And when she finds herself the recipient of a sudden act of kindness, Carrie feels like she's finally been given a chance to be normal. She hopes that the nightmare of her classmates' vicious taunts is over . . . but an unexpected and cruel prank turns her gift into a weapon of horror so destructive that the town may never recover.

"Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes into the deepest well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher--for that world or ours." --

The #1 New York Times bestseller and “compulsive page-turner” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) about a reluctant clairvoyant man who must weigh his options when he suddenly sees the terrible future awaiting mankind—from master storyteller Stephen King. When Johnny Smith was six years old, head trauma caused by a bad ice-skating accident left him with a nasty bruise on his forehead and, from time to time, those hunches…infrequent but accurate snippets of things to come. But it isn’t until Johnny’s a grown man—now having survived a horrifying auto injury that plunged him into a coma lasting four-and-a-half years—that his special abilities really push to the fore. Johnny Smith comes back from the void with an extraordinary gift that becomes his life’s curse…presenting visions of what was and what will be for the innocent and guilty alike. But when he encounters a ruthlessly ambitious and amoral man who promises a terrifying fate for all humanity, Johnny must find a way to prevent a harrowing predestination from becoming reality.