Nightmares & Dreamscapes
by Stephen King
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Many people who write about horror literature maintain that mood is its most important element. Stephen King disagrees: "My deeply
held conviction is that story must be paramount.... All other considerations are secondary--theme, mood, even characterization and
language."
These fine stories, each written in what King calls "a burst of faith, happiness, and optimism," prove his point. The theme, mood,
characters, and language vary, but throughout, a sense of story reigns supreme. Nightmares & Dreamscapes contains 20 short
tales--including several never before published--plus one teleplay, one poem, and one nonfiction piece about kids and baseball that
appeared in the New Yorker. The subjects include vampires, zombies, an evil toy, man-eating frogs, the burial of a Cadillac, a
disembodied finger, and a wicked stepfather. The style ranges from King's well-honed horror to a Ray Bradbury-like fantasy voice to an
ambitious pastiche of Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald. And like a compact disc with a bonus track, the book ends with a
charming little tale not listed in the table of contents--a parable called "The Beggar and the Diamond."
--Fiona Webster
On The Flap
A solitary finger pokes out of a drain. Novelty
teeth turn predatory. Flies settle and die on an old pair of
sneakers in New York, and the Nevada desert swallows a Cadillac.
Meanwhile, the legend of Castle Rock returns...and grows on you.
What does it all mean? What else could it mean? First
there was Night Shift (1978), then Skeleton
Crew (1985), and now Stephen King is back with a third collection
of stories--a vast, many-chambered cave of a volume, with passages leading
every which way to hell...and a few to glory.
The long reach of Stephen King's imagination and the
no-holds-barred force of his storytelling have never been so richly
demonstrated. There's something here for readers of every stripe and
predilection--classic tales of the macabre and the monstrous, cutting-edge
explorations of the borderlands between good and evil, brilliant pastiches
of Chandler and Conan Doyle, even a teleplay and a non-fiction bonus, a
heartfelt piece on Little League baseball that first appeared in The
New Yorker.
In story after story, several published here for the first
time, he will take you to places you've never been before, places that are
both dark and vividly illuminated. Fair warning: You will lose a
good deal of sleep. But Stephen King, writing to beat the devil,
will do your dreaming for you.
Can you believe? Then come...
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