Ratings62
Average rating3.8
A solitary finger pokes out of a drain. Novelty teeth turn predatory. Flies settle and die on an old pair of sneakers in New York, and the Nevada desert swallows a Cadillac. Meanwhile the legend of Castle Rock returns . . . and grows on you. What does it all mean? What else could it mean? First there was Night Shift (1978), then Skeleton Crew (1985), and now Stephen King is back with a third collection of stories--a vast, many-chambered cave of a volume, with passages leading every which way to hell . . . and a few to glory.
The long reach of Stephen King's imagination and the no-holds-barred force of his storytelling have never been so richly demonstrated. There's something here for readers of every stripe and predilection--classic tales of the macabre and the monstrous, cutting-edge explorations of the borderlands between good and evil, brilliant pastiches of Chandler and Conan Doyle, even a teleplay and a non-fiction bonus, a heartfelt piece of Little League baseball that first appeared in The New Yorker.
In story after story, several published here for the first time, he will take you to places you've never been before, places that are both dark and vividly illuminated. Fair warning: You will lose a good deal of sleep. But Stephen King, writing to beat the devil, will do your dreaming for you.
Can you believe? Then come . . .
([source][1])
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Contains:
- [Dolan's Cadillac][2]
- [The End of the Whole Mess][3]
- Suffer the Little Children
- [The Night Flier][4]
- Popsy
- It Grows on You
- [Chattery Teeth][5]
- [Dedication][6]
- [The Moving Finger][7]
- [Sneakers][8]
- [You Know They Got a Hell of a Band][9]
- [Home Delivery][10]
- [Rainy Season][11]
- [My Pretty Pony][12]
- Sorry, Right Number
- [The Ten O'Clock People][13]
- [Crouch End][14]
- [The House on Maple Street][15]
- The Fifth Quarter
- [The Doctor's Case][16]
- [Umney's Last Case][17]
- Head Down
- Brooklyn August
[1]: https://stephenking.com/library/story_collection/nightmares__dreamscapes_flap.html
[2]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14916968W/Dolan's_Cadillac
[3]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650789W/The_End_of_the_Whole_Mess
[4]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650747W/The_Night_Flier
[5]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650843W/Chattery_Teeth
[6]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650711W/Dedication
[7]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650782W/The_Moving_Finger
[8]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650831W/Sneakers
[9]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650807W/You_Know_They_Got_a_Hell_of_a_Band
[10]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650837W/Home_Delivery
[11]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650825W/Rainy_Season
[12]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL81590W/My_Pretty_Pony
[13]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650723W/The_Ten_O'Clock_People
[14]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650699W/Crouch_End
[15]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650797W/The_House_on_Maple_Street
[16]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650676W/The_Doctor's_Case
[17]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14917659W/Umney's_Last_Case
Reviews with the most likes.
Stephen King explains that he believes Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, and Nightmares & Dreamscapes to all be one trilogy of his shorts. The latter of which consisting of some shorts he didn't think were entirely ready on the same level as the other two collections at first.
- Crouch End (Lovecraftian horror)
- Suffer the Little Children (feels Clive Barkerian)
- Sorry Right Number (Hitchcock would've loved this Twilight Zone style ep)
- Popsy (the recent Abigail movie definitely read this)
- Chattery Teeth (feels like parallel to The Monkey)
- The Night Flier (Nightmare at 20,000 Feet if the plane also landed)
- 10 O'clock People (King's They Live)
- Rainy Season (Shirley Jackson's The Summer People meet The Nest)
- The End of the Whole Mess (could be a Twilight Zone ep)
- Ummey's Last Case (great Barton Finkish concept that should be adapted)
- Home Delivery (small island community zombie short)
- The Moving Finger (guy loses his mind locked in his apartment type beat)
- Dolan's Cadillac (might be the most screen adaptation potential, which it does have one)
- Doctor's Case (King's jab at Sherlock & Watson)
- The Fifth Quarter
- It Grows on You
- My Pretty Pony (feels like a brief flashback of a bigger story)
- Sneakers (incredibly underwhelming given the potential)
- You Know They've got a Hell of a Band (bland despite the premise)
- Dedication (as usual, King is rather odd when writing Black characters, and this is an entire Black narrative here)
- The House on Maple Street (forgot it instantly)
- The Beggar and the Diamond (not a King story, but added in)
I don't count the poem Brooklyn August, or Head Down, as that was King sitting about his son's real baseball game.