Stephen King
1) It: a novel
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"Can an entire city be haunted? The Losers' Club of 1958 seems to think so. After all, when they were teenagers back then, these seven friends who called the small New England metropolis of Derry their home had first-hand experience with what made this place so horribly different. Every twenty-seven years, something that has existed here for a very long time comes back to terrorize Derry, lurking in the city storm drains and sewers, taking the shape...
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Taking place mere hours following the events seen in The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three continues with Roland of Gilead on his solitary quest for the Dark Tower, leading him to a seemingly endless stretch of beach along the Western Sea -- a terrain filled with unearthly monstrosities that mean certain death if he lets his guard down. But there are other mysteries along this desolate shoreline as well: three arcane doorways standing freely in...
3) If it bleeds
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Holly Gibney (from Stephen King's Bill Hodges 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 stories show King's range, they also prove that certain...
4) The stand
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Checked Out Podcast GHPLD - Episode 2: How Do You Like Your Horror?
Notable Novels: 1970s
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Notable Novels: 1970s
Patron Favorites
Staff Picks
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After a virus kills most of the people in the world, a handful of survivors choose sides-- a world of good led by 108-year-old Mother Abigail-- or evil led by a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.
5) Later
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Sometimes growing up means facing your demons. The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine - as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer...
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"From master storyteller Stephen King comes an extraordinary new novel with intertwining storylines-one about a killer on a diabolical revenge mission, and another about a vigilante targeting a feminist celebrity speaker-featuring the beloved Holly Gibney and a dynamic new cast of characters. When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from a person threatening to "kill thirteen innocents and one guilty" in "an act of atonement...
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"You like it darker? Fine, so do I," writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life--both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King...
8) Joyland
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Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever.
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Bill Hodges trilogy volume 1
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English
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Description
"In a mega-stakes, high-suspense race against time, three of the most unlikely and winning heroes Stephen King has ever created try to stop a lone killer from blowing up thousands. In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, hundreds of desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging...
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Bill Hodges trilogy volume 2
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English
Description
"A masterful, intensely suspenseful novel about a reader whose obsession with a reclusive writer goes far too far-- a book about the power of storytelling, starring the same trio of unlikely and winning heroes King introduced in Mr. Mercedes" -- provided by publisher.
""Wake up, genius." So begins King's instantly riveting story about a vengeful reader. The genius is John Rothstein, an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but...
11) Carrie
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English
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2026 Book-to-Screen Adaptations
Adult Activity Challenge 2026: Books Under 300 Pages
Back to School SHPL
More Lists...
Adult Activity Challenge 2026: Books Under 300 Pages
Back to School SHPL
More Lists...
Description
Stephen King's legendary debut, about a teenage outcast and the revenge she enacts on her classmates. Carrie White may be picked on by her classmates, but she has a gift. She can move things with her mind. Doors lock. Candles fall. This is her power and her problem. Then, an act of kindness, as spontaneous as the vicious taunts of her classmates, offers Carrie a chance to be a normal... until an unexpected cruelty turns her gift into a weapon of horror...
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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...
13) The outsider
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"An unspeakable crime. A confounding investigation. At a time when the King brand has never been stronger, he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories. An eleven-year-old boy's violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City's most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective...
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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. Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when...
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"When Gwendy Peterson was twelve, a mysterious stranger named Richard Farris gave her a mysterious box for safekeeping. It offered treats and vintage coins, but it was dangerous. Pushing any of its seven colored buttons promised death and destruction. Years later, the button box entered Gwendy's life again. A successful novelist and a rising political star, she was once again forced to deal with the temptation that box represented. Now, evil forces...
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"When Billy Summers was twelve years old, he shot and killed his mother's boyfriend after he kicked Billy's sister to death. At 17, he enlisted in the army. At 18, he was a sniper in Iraq and involved in the deadly battle to recapture Fallujah. For nearly twenty years, he's worked as a paid assassin. He's a good guy in a bad job, and he wants out. He takes on a very complicated, very lucrative job that he hopes will be his last. He's got a perfect...
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"A master storyteller at his best--the O. Henry Prize winner Stephen King delivers a generous collection of stories, several of them brand-new, featuring revelatory autobiographical comments on when, why, and how he came to write (or rewrite) each story. Since his first collection, Nightshift, published thirty-five years ago, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. In this new collection he assembles, for the...
18) A Good Marriage
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English
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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...
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...
19) Elevation
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"Set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine. The latest from legendary master storyteller Stephen King, a riveting, extraordinarily eerie, and moving story about a man whose mysterious affliction brings a small town together--a timely, upbeat tale about finding common ground despite deep-rooted differences. Although Scott Carey doesn't look any different, he's been steadily losing weight. There are a couple of other odd things, too. He weighs...
20) Revival: a novel
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English
Description
"In a small New England town over half a century ago, a boy is playing with his new toy soldiers in the dirt in front of his house when a shadow falls over him. He looks up to see a striking man, the new minister, Jamie learns later, who with his beautiful wife, will transform the church and the town. The men and boys are a bit in love with Mrs. Jacobs; the women and girls, with the Reverend Jacobs--including Jamie's sisters and mother. Then tragedy...










