Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales

The first collection of stories Stephen King has published since Nightmares and Dreamscapes nine years ago, Everything's Eventual includes one O. Henry Prize winner, two other award winners, four stories published by The New Yorker, and "Riding the Bullet," King's original e-book, which attracted over half a million online readers and became the most famous short story of the decade.

"Riding the Bullet," published here on paper for the first time, is the story of Alan Parker, who's hitchhiking to see his dying mother but takes the wrong ride, farther than he ever intended. In "Lunch at the Gotham Café," a sparring couple's contentious lunch turns very, very bloody when the maître d' gets out of sorts. "1408," the audio story in print for the first time, is about a successful writer whose specialty is "Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Graveyards" or "Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Houses," and though Room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel doesn't kill him, he won't be writing about ghosts anymore. And in "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French," terror is déjà vu at 16,000 feet.

Whether writing about encounters with the dead, the near dead, or about the mundane dreads of life, from quitting smoking to yard sales, Stephen King is at the top of his form in the fourteen dark tales assembled in Everything's Eventual. Intense, eerie, and instantly com-pelling, they announce the stunningly fertile imagination of perhaps the greatest storyteller of our time.

"King gathers previously uncollected tales from sources that show his desire to stay fresh by diving into new waters....Less stylish than The Green Mile (or than Poe), though King remains strong in the short form." Kirkus Reviews

"[C]ompelling....Among the 14 stories...there are a few so brilliantly creepy that some readers will find their brain dendrites still wigged out long after they have finished the book....[King] sure can write." USA Today

Writing about encounters with the dead, about near death, or about the plain dread of mundane life, King is in top form in this collection of dark tales--his first in nine years. Includes three never-before-printed stories and four pieces previously published in "The New Yorker."

The first collection of stories Stephen King has published since Nightmares & Dreamscapes nine years ago, Everything's Eventual includes one O. Henry Prize winner, two other award winners, four stories published by The New Yorker, and "Riding the Bullet," King's original e-book, which attracted over half a million online readers and became the most famous short story of the decade.

"Riding the Bullet," published here on paper for the first time, is the story of Alan Parker, who's hitchhiking to see his dying mother but takes the wrong ride, farther than he ever intended. In "Lunch at the Gotham Caf

Stephen King is the author of more than forty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. Among his most recent are Dreamcatcher, On Writing, Hearts in Atlantis, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Bag of Bones, The Green Mile, and Black House with Peter Straub. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

Contents

What I did was take all the spades out of a deck of cards plus a joker. Ace to King = 1-13. Joker = 14. I shuffled the cards and dealt them. The order in which they came out became the order of the stories, based on their position in the list my publisher sent me. And it actually created a very nice balance between the literary stories and the all-out screamers. Next collection: selected by Tarot.

Introduction

Autopsy Room Four

The Man in the Black Suit

All That You Love Will Be Carried Away

The Death of Jack Hamilton

In the Deathroom

The Little Sisters of Eluria

Everything's Eventual

L.T.'s Theory of Pets

The Road Virus Heads North

Lunch at the Gotham Café

That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French

1408

Riding the Bullet

Luckey Quarter