Synopses & Reviews
Includes the story “Premium Harmony” — set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine
The masterful #1 New York Times bestselling story collection from O. Henry Prize winner Stephen King that includes twenty-one iconic stories with accompanying autobiographical comments on when, why and how he came to write (or rewrite) each one.
For more than thirty-five years, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. In this new collection he introduces each story with a passage about its origins or his motivations for writing it.
As Entertainment Weekly said about this collection: “Bazaar of Bad Dreams is bursting with classic King terror, but what we love most are the thoughtful introductions he gives to each tale that explain what was going on in his life as he wrote it."
There are thrilling connections between stories; themes of morality, the afterlife, guilt, what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past. In “Afterlife,” a man who died of colon cancer keeps reliving the same life, repeating his mistakes over and over again. Several stories feature characters at the end of life, revisiting their crimes and misdemeanors. Others address what happens when someone discovers that he has supernatural powers — the columnist who kills people by writing their obituaries in “Obits;” the old judge in “The Dune” who, as a boy, canoed to a deserted island and saw names written in the sand, people who then died in freak accidents. In “Morality,” King looks at how a marriage and two lives fall apart after the wife and husband enter into what seems, at first, a devil’s pact they can win.
“I made these stories especially for you,” says King. “Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth.”
Stories include:
• Mile 81
• Premium Harmony
• Batman and Robin Have an Altercation
• The Dune
• Bad Little Kid
• A Death
• The Bone Church
• Morality
• Afterlife
• Ur
• Herman Wouk Is Still Alive
• Under the Weather
• Blockade Billy
• Mister Yummy
• Tommy
• The Little Green God of Agony
• Cookie Jar
• That Bus Is Another World
• Obits
• Drunken Fireworks
• Summer Thunder
Review
“Renowned author King’s impressive latest collection wraps 20 stories and poems in fascinating commentary…the stories themselves are meditations on mortality, destiny, and regret, all of which showcase King’s talent for exploring the human condition…this introspective collection, like many of King’s most powerful works, draws on the deepest emotions: love, grief, fear and hope.” Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
“In the more harrowing tales of The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, [it’s] the quotidian particulars of 21st century life — Walmart, DUI convictions, road rage, the stony realism of Maine’s rural poor — that haunt us…The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, of course, wouldn’t feel like real Stephen King to some without a closing story from the apocalypse. In the grimly gorgeous‘Summer Thunder,’ another high point in the collection, a man,his stray dog, Gandalf, and a neighbor wait out radiation poisoning at the end of the world. The final line is killer.” Ethan Gilsdorf, The Boston Globe
Review
“There are a lot of good stories in this collection: moving,disturbing and in between. ‘Summer Thunder’ imagines a post-apocalyptic world of startling beauty…In ‘Morality,’ a marriage goes south when a wife falls prey to the imprecations of her employer — not sexual, but ethical. The idea is that we are all complicit, fundamentally, in what happens to us, that the stain of sin is a collective one…When King gives himself a little room to move,the effects are not only unnerving but also deeply human, a series of riffs on love and loss.” David Ulin, The Los Angeles Times
About the Author
Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), the short story collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, the Bill Hodges trilogy End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and now an AT&T Audience Network original television series), Doctor Sleep, and Under the Dome. His novel 11/22/63 — a Hulu original television series event — was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower and It are the basis for major motion pictures. He is the recipient of the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.