Stephen King - From the Borderlands - Stationary Bike - (2006)

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From the Borderlands - Stationary Bike

Stephen King - Everythings Eventual - Lunch At Gotham Cafe - (2002)

In this second story Steven Davis' wife Diane has left him abruptly with no warning and he finds himself in a messy divorce. He discovers how desperately he wants Diane back and then he discovers how much Diane hates his guts. On top of it all he gives up smoking, going cold turkey from between 20 and 40 cigarettes a day to zero, and is suffering from nicotine withdrawal both physically and psychologically, as well as insomnia. He's a complete mess.

A luncheon meeting is suggested by Diane's lawyer, and Steven Davis wants so badly to see Diane again that he goes to the meeting against the advice of his own lawyer. Lunch at the Gotham Café starts off badly with Steven and Diane tearing into each other emotionally. And then things go completely crazy, in a horrible and totally unexpected way.

Again, there is no supernatural involved, just plain old human insanity, including the kinds of insanity commonly known as love and hate. It could happen to you or me.

Both of these stories are very good. They both feature the standard Stephen King ingredients: very believable, fairly ordinary, people, suddenly confronted with a very horrible situation, a situation way beyond the horrors most of us will ever encounter. We empathize with these people and root for them, although we know that they may not survive the horror they've encountered.

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Lunch at Gotham Cafe Part 1
Lunch at Gotham Cafe Part 2
Lunch at Gotham Cafe Part 3
Lunch at Gotham Cafe Part 4

Stephen King - Everythings Eventual - In The Deathroom - (2002)

5.0 out of 5 stars Stephen King reads Stephen King, and he does a good job, September 9, 2006

By	Rennie Petersen (Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Here are two short stories ("In the Deathroom" and "Lunch at the Gotham Café") written and read by Stephen King, and presented on audio CD.

"In the Deathroom"

This story takes place in a Central American dictatorship and pits Fletcher, a New York Times reporter, against the head of the local secret police, who intends to torture and then kill Fletcher. Fletcher's chances of survival are approximately zero, and the major question seems to concern the way in which he will die.

There is nothing supernatural involved in this story. All the horror comes from a man-made situation and features simple human evil. What kind of people can torture human beings and find enjoyment in it?

Incidentally, I'm fairly sure that the background for this story is Stephen King's outrage over the rape and murder of three American nuns in El Salvador in 1980. There is a certain anger in his writing that is understandable when taking that real-life occurrence into account.

In The Deathroom

Stephen King - Everythings Eventual - _Everythings Eventual - (short story) - (2002)

In his introduction to Everything's Eventual, horror author extraordinaire Stephen King describes how he used a deck of playing cards to select the order in which these 14 tales of the macabre would appear. Judging by the impact of these stories, from the first words of the darkly fascinating "Autopsy Room Four" to the haunting final pages of "Luckey Quarter," one can almost believe King truly is guided by forces from beyond.

His first collection of short stories since the release of Nightmares & Dreamscapes in 1993, Everything's Eventual represents King at his most undiluted. The short story format showcases King's ability to spook readers using the most mundane settings (a yard sale) and comfortable memories (a boyhood fishing excursion). The dark tales collected here are some of King's finest, including an O. Henry Prize winner and "Riding the Bullet," published originally as an e-book and at one time expected by some to be the death knell of the physical publishing world. True to form, each of these stories draws the reader into King's slightly off-center world from the first page, developing characters and atmosphere more fully in the span of 50 pages than many authors can in a full novel.

For most rabid King fans, chief among the tales in this volume will be "The Little Sisters of Eluria," a novella that first appeared in the fantasy collection Legends, set in King's ever-expanding Dark Tower universe. In this story, set prior to the first Dark Tower volume, the reader finds Gunslinger Roland of Gilead wounded and under the care of nurses with very dubious intentions. Also included in this collection are "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French," the story of a woman's personal hell; "1408," in which a writer of haunted tour guides finally encounters the real thing; "Everything's Eventual," the title story, about a boy with a dream job that turns out to be more of a nightmare; and "L.T.'s Theory of Pets," a story of divorce with a bloody surprise ending.

King also includes an introductory essay on the lost art of short fiction and brief explanatory notes that give the reader background on his intentions and inspirations for each story. As with any occasion when King directly addresses his dear Constant Readers, his tone is that of a camp counselor who's almost apologetic for the scare his fireside tales are about to throw into his charges, yet unwilling to soften the blow. And any campers gathered around this author's fire would be wise to heed his warnings, for when King goes bump in the night, it's never just a branch on the window. --Benjamin Reese

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Everything's Eventual (Short Story)

Stephen King - Everythings Eventual (2002)

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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Stephen King - Duma Key - (2008)

Recipient of the Grand Master distinction from the Mystery Writers of America, Stephen King deftly explores the frightening connection between creative and destructive impulses. When self-made millionaire Edgar Freemantle is mangled in an accident, his life falls into disarray. Prone to fits of rage, Edgar moves to Duma Key, a secluded area on the Florida coast where he can paint and that's when his nightmare begins.

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Duma Key Part 1
Duma Key Part 2
Duma Key Part 3

Stephen King - Different Seasons - The Shawshank Redemption - (1982)

It will take all of King's monumental byline-insurance to drum up an audience for this bottom-of-the-trunk collection: four overpadded novellas, in non-horror genres - without the gripping situations needed to transcend King's notoriously clumsy writing. Best of the lot is Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption - in which banker Andy Dufresne, in a Maine prison for life for murdering his wife and her lover, plans his escape over a 20-year period, working his way through four feet of concrete to get to the sewer shaft beyond. The climax is feeble (especially after such a long build-up), the redemption theme is murky - but the close observation of prison life offers some engaging details. "Apt Pupil," on the other hand, is crude and utterly unconvincing: Todd, an All-American California boy, discovers that Mr. Denker down the block is really an aged Nazi war criminal - so he extorts long confessions from the old man, relishing all the atrocity details, becoming totally corrupted by the Nazi mystique; at last, however, the old Nazi (who gets his kicks by killing winos) takes revenge on the boy - and their evil symbiosis ends in a muddle of suicide, murder, and madness. The third piece is the most conventional: "The Body," a familiar fall-from-innocence tale about four not-very-bright Maine lads (one of whom, the reminiscing narrator, will become a novelist) who go into the woods to locate the body of a boy thrown from a trestle by a train. And "The Breathing Method" - told, a la Peter Straub's Ghost Story, as a gentleman's club anecdote - is the most explicitly horrific: an unwed mother is decapitated on Christmas Eve but gives birth in falling sleet anyway. . . because of the Lamaze Method. Thin gimmicks, weighed down with King's weak characters and weaker prose (unlike his crisp short stories) - but the fans may come around yet again, despite the clear evidence that King needs the supernatural to distract from his awesome limitations as a mainstream storyteller. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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The Shawshank Redemption

Stephen King - Different Seasons - The Breathing Method - (1982)

From the world's bestselling novelist comes the third tale in the Different Seasons collection. In this masterful horror story, thirteen men gather in their gentlemen's club to hear the story of "The Breathing Method." And they will be forever transfigured by this terrifying story of a woman who was determined to give birth at all costs.

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The Breathing Method

Stephen King - Different Seasons - Apt Pupil - (1982)

Todd Bowden is an apt pupil. Good grades, good family, a paper route. But he is about to meet a different kind of teacher: Mr. Dussander. Todd knows all about Dussander's darl past. The torture. The death. The decades-old manhunt Dussander has escaped to this day. Yet Todd doesn't want to turn him in. Todd wants to know more. Much more. He is about to learn the real meaning of power--and the seductive lure of evil.

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Apt Pupil

Stephen King - Desperation - (1996)

En route to Lake Tahoe for a much anticipated vacation, the Carver family is arrested for blowing out all four tires on their camper. Collie Entragian is the arresting officer, the self-made sheriff of a town called Desperation, Nevada, and the quintessential bad cop. Unbeknownst to the Carvers, Entragian regularly sniffs out passerbys on this stretch of road, and in fact has done in nearly every resident of his hometown. He can also change form and summon the help of creepy creatures, including scorpions, snakes and spiders. Though the family seems doomed, an unlikely hero emerges --11-year-old David Carver--who finds his own way to get around the Law.

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Desperation Part 1
Desperation Part 2
Desperation Part 3

Stephen King - Dark Visions - with George Martin & Dan Simmons - (1988)

Stephen King leads off with three stories, including 'Sneakers', about a very unusual haunting, and 'Dedication', one of the most powerful and unsettling of all his works. Dan Simmons pays homage to Philip K Dick with 'Metastasis', one of three highly accomplished stories. And George Martin rounds off the book with the brilliant werewolf novella, 'The Skin Trade'. Dark Visions is a brilliantly original showcase from three masters of the macabre.

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Dark Visions Part 1
Dark Visions Part 2
Dark Visions Part 3

Stephen King - Cell - (2006)

Witness Stephen King's triumphant, blood-spattered return to the genre that made him famous. Cell, the king of horror's homage to zombie films (the book is dedicated in part to George A. Romero) is his goriest, most horrific novel in years, not to mention the most intensely paced. Casting aside his love of elaborate character and town histories and penchant for delayed gratification, King yanks readers off their feet within the first few pages; dragging them into the fray and offering no chance catch their breath until the very last page.

In Cell King taps into readers fears of technological warfare and terrorism. Mobile phones deliver the apocalypse to millions of unsuspecting humans by wiping their brains of any humanity, leaving only aggressive and destructive impulses behind. Those without cell phones, like illustrator Clayton Riddell and his small band of "normies," must fight for survival, and their journey to find Clayton's estranged wife and young son rockets the book toward resolution.

Fans that have followed King from the beginning will recognize and appreciate Cell as a departure--King's writing has not been so pure of heart and free of hang-ups in years (wrapping up his phenomenal Dark Tower series and receiving a medal from the National Book Foundation doesn't hurt either). "Retirement" clearly suits King, and lucky for us, having nothing left to prove frees him up to write frenzied, juiced-up horror-thrillers like Cell.

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Cell

Stephen King - Carrie - (1974)

Stephen King's first published novel offers a warning to bullies in the person of Carrie White, a high school misfit who wreaks her revenge in a now-famous prom scene. While the story is no less fresh today than it was in 1974, this audio edition promises a "brand-new introduction from the author," which is not, in fact, included in the recording. The story is narrated by Sissy Spacek, who played the title role in the movie. While Spacek perfectly understands the protagonist and amply projects both her hopes and misery, this listener found it unsettling to hear a story about Maine natives in a Maine town read in a clear Texas drawl. Spacek's consistency and acting ability somewhat make up for this incongruity, but King's "Mainiacs" still sound more performed than real. R.L.L. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine.

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Carrie

Stephen King - Blood and Smoke - (2000)

Stephen King had such fun recording the epic, unabridged audio version of his haunting novel Bag of Bones, he decided to publish the three-story collection Blood and Smoke exclusively on audio. They're horror stories, good and dark, loosely linked by the theme of cigarettes and a macabre humor. The flip-top cigarette-box package is amusingly cool, too.

In the first tale, "Lunch at the Gotham Café," Steve Davis quits smoking two days after his wife dumps him. King cleverly compares the two kinds of withdrawal: obsession blends with emotional flatness, and you're left "with a feeling the world has taken on a decidedly dreamy cast." Driven, Steve meets with his wife and her lawyer at a midtown Manhattan restaurant, where the nightmare begins. "I was pretty sure something was wrong with the maitre d' almost as soon as I saw him," says Steve, and gothic café events soon prove him right.

But the gory denouement actually worked better on the page, in the 1995 book Dark Love. King's two new stories, written directly for audio, outdo the first. In "1408," Mike Enslin, a writer who once studied with Jane Smiley, dreamed of being a Yale Younger Poet, and "starved on the payroll of The Village Voice," is reduced to hacking out stuff like "10 Nights in 10 Haunted Houses." For a follow-up, he visits room 1408 of the film noir-ish Dolphin Hotel. "Five women and one man have jumped from that room's single window, Mr. Enslin," notes the proprietor. "Twelve suicides in 68 years." Ah, but Mike is wearing his "lucky Hawaiian shirt--it's the one with the ghost repellent," and an unlit cigarette is tucked behind his ear.

"In the Deathroom" evokes another scary small space: a bloodstained basement Ministry of Information in which Fletcher, a reporter who quit smoking long ago, asks Escobar and his torturer's assistants--Ramon and a woman who reminds Fletcher of the Bride of Frankenstein--for a last cigarette. Fletcher recognizes the "we don't need no steenkeeng badges" cliché he's trapped in, and is "amazed to discover that one's sense of humor ... could function this far into a state of terror." But when Fletcher takes a drag, "knowing he might be dead before it burned down to the filter," you'll be tense. King's nasal, sarcastic delivery puts you right in there with his horrified protagonists. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. (Amazon Review)

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Blood and Smoke Part 1
Blood and Smoke Part 2

Stephen King - Blaze - (2007)

Clayton Blaze Blazedell Jr.'s chance for a normal life ended when his father repeatedly threw him down a flight of stairs. After finishing his adolescence in an orphanage, the large man with a striking dent in his forehead plays sidekick to George, a social deviant with a knack for cons. However, when George is killed, Blaze must come up with a con of his own. With George's ghost to guide him, Blaze just might pull it off. Stephen King's last novel under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman has all the classic markings of the auteur, but is marred even before it starts by King's introduction, where he almost apologizes for publishing the book. Having narrated several King books already, McLarty already knows the author's syntax. His raspy but gentle narration provides a familiar and comforting voice for King fans. His rasp lightens up when delivering the slow-witted Blaze, but then deepens for George's scratchy voice. His old-timer Maine accents also produce a smile, when not evoking mental images of grizzled old semitoothed men.

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Blaze Part 1
Blaze Part 2
Blaze Part 3

Stephen King - Black House - with Peter Straub - (2001)

In the seemingly paradisal Wisconsin town of French Landing, small distortions disturb the beauty: a talking crow, an old man obeying strange internal marching orders, a house that is both there and not quite there. And roaming the town is a terrible fiend nicknamed the Fisherman, who is abducting and murdering small children and eating their flesh. The sheriff desperately wants the help of a retired Los Angeles cop, who once collared another serial killer in a neighboring town.

Of course, this is no ordinary policeman, but Jack Sawyer, hero of Stephen King and Peter Straub's 1984 fantasy The Talisman. At the end of that book, the 13-year-old Jack had completed a grueling journey through an alternate realm called the Territories, found a mysterious talisman, killed a terrible enemy, and saved the life of his mother and her counterpart in the Territories. Now in his 30s, Jack remembers nothing of the Talisman, but he also hasn't entirely forgotten:

When these faces rise or those voices mutter, he has until now told himself the old lie, that once there was a frightened boy who caught his mother's neurotic terror like a cold and made up a story, a grand fantasy with good old Mom-saving Jack Sawyer at its center. None of it was real, and it was forgotten by the time he was sixteen. By then he was calm. Just as he's calm now, running across his north field like a lunatic, leaving that dark track and those clouds of startled moths behind him, but doing it calmly.

Jack is abruptly pulled into the case--and back into the Territories--by the Fisherman himself, who sends Jack a child's shoe, foot still attached. As Jack flips back and forth between French Landing and the Territories, aided by his 20-years-forgotten friend Speedy Parker and a host of other oddballs (including a blind disk jockey, the beautiful mother of one of the missing children, and a motorcycle gang calling itself the "Hegelian Scum"), he tracks both the Fisherman and a much bigger fish: the abbalah, the Crimson King who seeks to destroy the axle of worlds.

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Black House Part 1
Black House Part 2
Black House Part 3

Stephen King - Bag of Bones - (1998)

No longer content to be the prolific provider of text, King grabs the audio reigns to recount this haunted tale of grief, young love, and otherworldly visits. When 40-year-old bestselling novelist Mike Noonan returns to his lakeside cabin to process his wife's death, he finds the place a beacon for nightmares and ghoulish visits. But there's hope in Kingsville, as this struggling writer falls in love with a young widow named Mattie and her 3-year-old psychic daughter, Kyra. If you've never heard King speak, be warned: 19-plus hours of his western Maine, nasal-drenched tones may be more than some listeners can bear. But there's a certain warmth and believability to King's voice--after all, it's his book and he is a middle-aged bestselling novelist--that jive well with Noonan's character. And since King rarely reads his own work, perhaps his doing so indicates that he's especially pleased with Bag of Bones; most listeners should be as well. (Running time: 19.5 hours, 14 cassettes) --Rob McDonald

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Bag Of Bones Part 1
Bag Of Bones Part 2
Bag Of Bones Part 3
Bag Of Bones Part 4
Bag Of Bones Part 5
Bag Of Bones Part 6
Bag Of Bones Part 7
Bag Of Bones Part 8
Bag Of Bones Part 9
Bag Of Bones Part 10