Together, they form a dark constellation of stories that generations have traced, in wonder and fear and hope.īelow, I've ranked King's books in order from worst to best. That still leaves over sixty novels and more than a dozen collections of tales. Any published stories compiled within a larger collection will not be ranked singularly. The man has written over seventy books, so some nod to brevity is required. The following list is an attempt to rank King’s published work in all its darkness, weatherworn beauty, and surprising weirdness. Of course, in so long and varied a career, there are exhilarating highs, a few bewildering lows, and many unexpected diversions. Nat Cassidy, author of this year’s Mary: An Awakening of Terror, put it best, describing King as his “mother tongue.” He is not just a writer he is an industry, an aesthetic, a genre of one.

I have interviewed hundreds of horror writers from all across the genre’s wide spectrum, and when asked for their inspirations and their gateways to fearful fiction, so many leap immediately to King. But for millions of readers and writers, he is our North Star, our Southern Cross. Following the events of The Shining, Danny remains psychologically traumatized, while Wendy, his mother, slowly recovers from her injuries. The novel is a direct sequel to Kings 1977 novel The Shining. It is his 51st novel and the 44th under his own name. Such prolificacy has often led to sniffing criticism from those who consider him “merely” a horror writer (as if horror is anything “mere”). Doctor Sleep is the 64th book published by Stephen King. Almost everything he has ever written has been optioned or adapted for the screen, in some cases several times.

King has regularly published two or three books per year, a stream of words that flows incessantly west towards Hollywood. He arrived during a resurgent interest in all things frightening–following the success of Ira Levin's Rosemary’s Baby (1967) and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist (1971)-and quickly set about reshaping the genre in his own image. Since the publication of his first novel Carrie, just shy of fifty years ago, King has held dominion over the landscape of horror. Film adaptations of his work include ' Misery ' and ' Stand By Me '. There will probably never be another author like Stephen King. Stephen King has written dozens of bestselling books including The Shining, The Stand, and The Green Mile.

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