Horror
*#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* Includes "Mr. Harrigan's Phone"--now a Netflix original film starring Donald Sutherland and Jaeden Martell! From the legendary storyteller and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary collection of four new "exceptionally compelling novellas that reaffirm [King's] mastery of the form" (The Washington Post). Readers adore Stephen King's novels, and his novellas are their own dark treat, briefer but just as impactful and enduring as his longer fiction. Many of his novellas have been made into iconic films, including "The Body" (Stand by Me) and "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" (Shawshank Redemption). The four brilliant tales in If It Bleeds prove as iconic as their predecessors. In the title story, reader favorite Holly Gibney (from the Mr. Mercedes trilogy and The Outsider) must face her fears, and possibly another outsider--this time on her own. In "Mr. Harrigan's Phone" an intergenerational friendship has a disturbing afterlife. "The Life of Chuck" explores, beautifully, how each of us contains multitudes. And in "Rat," a struggling writer must contend with the darker side of ambition. If these novellas show King's range, they also prove that certain themes endure. One of King's great concerns is evil, and in If It Bleeds, there's plenty of it. There is also evil's opposite, which in King's fiction often manifests as friendship. Holly is reminded that friendship is not only life-affirming but can be life-saving. Young Craig befriends Mr. Harrigan, and the sweetness of this late-in-life connection is its own reward. "An adroit vehicle to showcase the...nature of evil" (The Boston Globe), If It Bleeds is "exactly what I wanted to read right now," says Ruth Franklin in The New York Times Book Review.
A young boy is haunted by a voice in his head in this acclaimed, bestselling epic of literary horror from the author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
One of The Year's Best Books (People, EW, Lithub, Vox, Washington Post, and more) We can swallow our fear or let our fear swallow us. Single mother Kate Reese is on the run. Determined to improve life for her and her son, Christopher, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night with her child. Together, they find themselves drawn to the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. It's as far off the beaten track as they can get. Just one highway in, one highway out. At first, it seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. For six long days, no one can find him. Until Christopher emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged. He returns with a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a treehouse in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same again. Twenty years ago, Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower made readers everywhere feel infinite. Now, Chbosky has returned with an epic work of literary horror, years in the making, whose grand scale and rich emotion redefine the genre. Read it with the lights on.
One of The Year's Best Books (People, EW, Lithub, Vox, Washington Post, and more) We can swallow our fear or let our fear swallow us. Single mother Kate Reese is on the run. Determined to improve life for her and her son, Christopher, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night with her child. Together, they find themselves drawn to the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. It's as far off the beaten track as they can get. Just one highway in, one highway out. At first, it seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. For six long days, no one can find him. Until Christopher emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged. He returns with a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a treehouse in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same again. Twenty years ago, Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower made readers everywhere feel infinite. Now, Chbosky has returned with an epic work of literary horror, years in the making, whose grand scale and rich emotion redefine the genre. Read it with the lights on.
Ash-Tree Press, 1997. Originally published in 1921; this edition limited to 400 copies. Dust jacket protected; gray cloth; binding good; top edge lightly foxed; text clean. VG/VG
Arkham House, 1979. 1st edition; dust jacket protected; not price clipped; black cloth; binding tight; text clean. VG/VG
Arkham House, 1964. 1st edition; dust jacket protected; spine slightly faded; black cloth; illustrated endpapers; binding good; text clean. G+/G+
Boys are being trained at one school for geniuses, girls at another. Neither knows the other exists--until now. The New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box invites you into a world of secrets and chills in a coming-of-age story like no other. NOMINATED FOR THE BRAM STOKER AWARD - "Josh Malerman is a master at unsettling you--and keeping you off-balance until the last page is turned."--Chuck Wendig, New York Times bestselling author of Blackbirds J is a student at a school deep in a forest far away from the rest of the world. J is one of only twenty-six students, all of whom think of the school's enigmatic founder as their father. J's peers are the only family he has ever had. The students are being trained to be prodigies of art, science, and athletics, and their life at the school is all they know--and all they are allowed to know. But J suspects that there is something out there, beyond the pines, that the founder does not want him to see, and he's beginning to ask questions. What is the real purpose of this place? Why can the students never leave? And what secrets is their father hiding from them? Meanwhile, on the other side of the forest, in a school very much like J's, a girl named K is asking the same questions. J has never seen a girl, and K has never seen a boy. As K and J work to investigate the secrets of their two strange schools, they come to discover something even more mysterious: each other. Praise for Inspection "Creepy. . . a novel whose premise is also claustrophobic and unsettling, but more ambitious than that of Bird Box . . . Inspection is rich with dread and builds to a dramatic climax."--The Washington Post "This unlikely cross between 1984 and Lord of the Flies tantalizes."--Kirkus Reviews "Malerman builds a striking world. . . . As he did in Bird Box, Malerman's crafted an irresistible scenario that's rich in possibility and thematic fruit. . . . Where [Bird Box] confined us behind a blindfold, Inspection rips it off." --The A. V. Club
"A must read . . . It's a wonderful thing, digging into a new Josh Malerman novel--no idea what to expect, no clue where his twisted mind is going to take you."--Cemetery Dance
"A must read . . . It's a wonderful thing, digging into a new Josh Malerman novel--no idea what to expect, no clue where his twisted mind is going to take you."--Cemetery Dance
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King, the most riveting and unforgettable story of kids confronting evil since It. "This is King at his best" (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch). In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis's parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents--telekinesis and telepathy--who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, "like the roach motel," Kalisha says. "You check in, but you don't check out." In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don't, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute. As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute "is another winner: creepy and touching and horrifyingly believable, all at once" (The Boston Globe).
1st edition; dust jacket protected; edges very lightly worn; covers lightly scuffed and scratched; black cloth spine over black paper boards; binding good; very slight cant to volume; text clean. VG/VG
10th Anniversary edition, 2nd printing; signed by author in black ink on ffep; dust jacket protected; rear cover of dj has vertical scratch; black cloth over black paper; binding tight; text clean. VG/G
Arkham House, 1960. 1st edition; dust jacket protected; small (3/4") closed vertical tear from top edge; corners chipped; black cloth; binding good; text clean. G/G