Different Seasons
by Stephen King

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Different Seasons (1982) is a collection of four novellas, markedly different in tone and subject, each on the theme of a journey. The first is a rich, satisfying, nonhorrific tale about an innocent man who carefully nurtures hope and devises a wily scheme to escape from prison. The second concerns a boy who discards his innocence by enticing an old man to travel with him into a reawakening of long-buried evil. In the third story, a writer looks back on the trek he took with three friends on the brink of adolescence to find another boy's corpse. The trip becomes a character-rich rite of passage from youth to maturity.

These first three novellas have been made into well-received movies: "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" into Frank Darabont's 1994 The Shawshank Redemption, "Apt Pupil" into Bryan Singer's 1998 film Apt Pupil, and "The Body" into Rob Reiner's Stand by Me (1986).

The final novella, "Breathing Lessons," is a horror yarn told by a doctor, about a patient whose indomitable spirit keeps her baby alive under extraordinary circumstances. It's the tightest, most polished tale in the collection.
--Fiona Webster 

On The Flap

"Is horror all you write?" is the second most frequent question Stephen King encounters*, he tells us in the Afterword to this superlative quartet of novels.  Although he is by now a world-class grand master of the horrific, he resists entombment in that genre.  That he can transcend horror is proved triumphantly in these four works.  At the same time, nobody in search of the utterly distinctive King brand of driving narrative, graphically rendered scene and character, and stamp-on-the-clinging-fingers cliffhanger plot will go away unsatisfied.  Consider the four:

Hope Springs Eternal

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption--the most satisfying tale of unjust imprisonment and offbeat escape since The Count of Monte Cristo.

Summer of Corruption

Apt Pupil--a golden California schoolboy and an old man whose hideous past he uncovers enter into a fateful and chilling mutual parasitism.

Fall from Innocence

The Body--four rambunctious young boys venture into the Maine woods and in sunlight and thunder find life, death, and intimations of their own mortality.

A Winter's Tale

The Breathing Method--a tale told in a strange club about a woman determined to give birth no matter what.

If these tales turn out to have an interlacing of nightmarish elements after all, the reason is no the occult, but twentieth-century humanity's apparent determination to return to the Dark Ages, a time for which Stephen King is obviously the ideal bard.

*Most frequent question: "Where do you get your ideas?"

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Print
Different Seasons (1982) -
Large Print Paperback (1999), Large Print Paperback (1999), Large Print Paperback (1999), Large Print Paperback (1999), Large Print Paperback (1999), Large Print Paperback (1999), Large Print Paperback (1999), Large Print Paperback (1999), Large Print Paperback (1999), Library Binding (1999), Mass Market Paperback (1999), Large Print Hardcover (1999), Hardcover (1998)
The Body (1982) -
Paperback (1999)
Apt Pupil (1982) -
Mass Market Paperback (1998)
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption a Story from Different Seasons (1982) -
Paperback (1994), Large Print Hardcover (1982)
The Breathing Method (1982) -
Paperback (1999), Paperback (1998), Large Print Textbook Binding (1984)
Digital
Different Seasons (1982) -
Microsoft Reader Download (1998), Adobe Reader Download (1998)
Audio
Different Seasons (1982) -
Audible.com (1998), Compact Disc (1998), Audio Cassette (1998)
Apt Pupil (unabridged) (1982) -
Audio Cassette (1998)
The Breathing Method (unabridged) (1982) -
Audio Cassette (2000)
The Body (1982) (unabridged) -
Audio Cassette (????)
The Shawshank Redemption (1982) (abridged) -
Audio Cassette (1995)
Video
Different Seasons (1982) -
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