1922
The chilling novella featured in Stephen King's bestselling collection Full Dark, No Stars, 1922 - about a man who succumbs to the violence within - is now available as a stand-alone publication. I believe there is a man inside every man, a stranger So writes Wilfred James in his confession. It's 1922. Wilfred owns eighty acres of farmland in Nebraska that have been in the family for generations. His wife, Arlette, owns an adjoining one hundred acres. But if Arlette carries out her threat to sell her land to a pig butcher, Wilfred will be forced to sell too. Worse, he'll have to move to the city. But he has a daring plan. It may work if he can persuade his son. A powerful tale of betrayal, murder, madness and rats, 1922 is a breathtaking exploration into the dark side of human nature from the great American storyteller Stephen King. It was adapted into a film from Netflix.
Full Dark, No Stars
"I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger . . ." writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up "1922," the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness. In "Big Driver," a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself. "Fair Extension," the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment. When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband. It’s a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends a good marriage. Like Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight, which generated such enduring films as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, Full Dark, No Stars proves Stephen King a master of the long story form.
Big Driver
Now a Lifetime original movie, Stephen King's haunting story about an author of a series of mystery novels who tries to reconcile her old life with her life after a horrific attack and the one thing that can save her: Revenge. Tess Thorne, a famous mystery writer, faces a long drive home following a book signing engagement. Advised to take a shortcut at the suggestion of the event’s planner, Tess sets out for home, well after dark. On a lonely stretch of New England road, her tire blows out, and when a man in a pick up stops, it is not to help her, but to repeatedly assault her and leave her for dead. Tess survives, and she plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself, capable of gruesome violence. This story was originally published in Stephen King’s acclaimed collection, Full Dark, No Stars.
A Good Marriage
Now a major motion picture, Stephen King's brilliant and terrifying story of a marriage with truly deadly secrets. Darcy Anderson’s husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his routine business trips when the unsuspecting Darcy looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a hidden box under a worktable and in it she discovers a trove of horrific evidence that her husband is two men—one, the benign father of her children, the other, a raging rapist and murderer. It’s a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends “A Good Marriage.” This story was originally published in Stephen King’s acclaimed collection, Full Dark, No Stars.
Wisconsin Death Trip
First published in 1973, this remarkable book about life in a small turn-of-the-century Wisconsin town has become a cult classic. Lesy has collected and arranged photographs taken between 1890 and 1910 by a Black River Falls photographer, Charles Van Schaik.
