Mile 81 Stephen King

[Janne Desir]

PeteSimmons, a typical younger brother, is out alone mucking around. His older brother wanted nothing to do with him today and sent Pete off to play and entertain himself. Pete, as younger brothers do, found himself at the old mile 81 rest stop. Walking around, he finds nude magazines, filth, and broken bottles. He also finds a bottle of vodka, Being the young and stupid kid he is. We have all been there; he drinks until he passes out.

This is a novelette, so there is not very much character development. What we do have is a crazy and unlikely story about a scary situation. I loved it. Mile 81 is a story that taps into a purely horror-filled moment written as only King can write it.

This is a short story, so there is not very much character development. What we do have is a crazy and unlikely story about a scary situation. I loved it. Mile 81 is a story that taps into a purely horror-filled moment written as only King can write it.

Elizabeth Tabler runs Beforewegoblog and is constantly immersed in fantasy stories. She was at one time an architect but divides her time now between her family in Portland, Oregon, and as many book worlds as she can get her hands on. She is also a huge fan of Self Published fantasy and is on Team Qwillery as a judge for SPFBO5. You will find her with a coffee in one hand and her iPad in the other. Find her on: Goodreads / Instagram / Pinterest / Twitter

Growing up, King was a fan of classic horror writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, and horror comics like Tales from the Crypt, which he later paid homage to in his screenplay for the film Creepshow. King wrote short stories for fanzines throughout his youth, but it was not until 1967 that he sold his first story, The Glass Floor, to a published magazine, Startling Mystery Stories.

Carrie was published in 1973 and became a bestseller. In 1976, the film version, directed by Brian De Palma, was released and is now considered a horror film classic. King's career flourished from that point on, with movie adaptations following closely behind his latest book releases.

Many of his characters either suffer from substance abuse or deal with the repercussions of living with addiction. This stems from King's own experience. He developed a severe drug addiction in the 1980s, which coincided with the release of some of his most popular novels. According to King in his memoir, On Writing, his addiction was so severe, he hardly remembers writing Cujo. His family staged an intervention in the late 80s, and King has been sober ever since. Needful Things is the first novel he published after becoming sober.

If you ever go to a Boston Red Sox baseball game, you might catch a glimpse of King in the stands, as he is a huge fan. His love for the Red Sox was transplanted into his novel The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and a cameo in the Jimmy Fallon-Drew Barrymore movie, Fever Pitch. (Coincidentally, the 1984 film adaptation of Firestarterstarred a young Drew Barrymore.) Much like Stan Lee, King often appears in film adaptations of his work (and sometimes other media), so keep an eye out for him!

If you want to get a taste for King's style, we recommend checking out a collection of his short stories or one of his novellas. If you are looking for full-length novels, consider that Carrie and The Long Walk were both written at the start of his career, while Misery and Pet Semetary were released at the height of his popularity in the 1980s.

The following novels occupy a shared universe and are pretty hefty reads for King beginners: Hearts in Atlantis, Desperation, It, Dreamcatcher, Duma Key, The Stand, The Tommyknockers, Rose Madder, Insomnia, and The Dark Tower series. The novel, Doctor Sleep, is a sequel to The Shining. The Mr. Mercedes trilogy consists of Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch.

Please also bear in mind that King is the Master of Horror for a reason. Some of his work features topics that readers may find triggering or simply distasteful. When in doubt, please contact your nearest librarian for assistance. With that, we wish you luck with your trip into the macabre, grotesque, and horrifying world of Stephen King.

Since his first collection, Nightshift, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. In this new collection he assembles, for the first time, recent stories that have never been published in a book. He introduces each with a passage about its origins or his motivations for writing it. There are thrilling connections between stories; themes of morality, the afterlife, guilt, and what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past.

A "hypnotic" (The New York Times Book Review) collection of four novellas from Stephen King, bound together by the changing of seasons, each taking on the theme of a journey with strikingly different tones and characters.

In The Body, four rambunctious young boys plunge through the facade of a small town and come face-to-face with life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. This novella became the movie Stand By Me. Finally, a disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death in The Breathing Method.

Two Past Midnight: Secret Window, Secret Garden enters the suddenly strange life of writer Mort Rainey, recently divorced, depressed, and alone on the shore of Tashmore Lake. Alone, that is, until a figure named John Shooter arrives, pointing an accusing finger.

In four previously unpublished short works, a man explores his dark nature, a writer confronts a stranger, a cancer patient makes a deal with the devil, and a woman makes a horrifying discovery about her husband.

In this masterful collection of short fiction, Joe Hill dissects timeless human struggles in 13 relentless tales of supernatural suspense, including In The Tall Grass, one of two stories co-written with Stephen King, and basis for the terrifying feature film from Netflix.

A little door that opens to a world of fairy-tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in Faun. A grief-stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in Late Returns. In By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain, two young friends stumble on the corpse of a plesiosaur at the water's edge, a discovery that forces them to confront the inescapable truth of their own mortality, and other horrors that lurk in the water's shivery depths. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in Throttle, also co-written with Stephen King.

A supermarket becomes the place where humanity makes its last stand against destruction. A trip to the attic becomes a journey to hell. A woman driving a Jaguar finds a scary shortcut to paradise. An idyllic lake harbors a bottomless evil. And a desert island is the scene of the most terrifying struggle for survival ever waged.

Outside a peaceful town in central Maine, a monster is waiting. Cujo is a 200-pound Saint Bernard, the best friend Brett Camber has ever had. One day, Cujo chases a rabbit into a cave inhabited by sick bats and emerges as something new altogether.

Meanwhile, Vic and Donna Trenton, and their young son Tad, move to Maine. They are seeking peace and quiet, but life in this small town is not what it seems. As Tad tries to fend off the terror that comes to him at night from his bedroom closet, and as Vic and Donna face their own nightmare of a marriage on the rocks, there is no way they can know that a monster, infinitely sinister, waits in the daylight.

Young Charlie McGee is a very special girl. The result of scientific experimentation on her parents, she has the ability to create fires wherever and whenever she chooses, by force of will alone. On the run from sinister government agents with her telekenetic father, she only wants to forget her monstrous abilities, and live a normal life.

During a six-mile hike on the Maine-New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Trail, nine-year-old Trisha McFarland quickly tires of the constant bickering between her older brother and her recently divorced mother. When Trisha briefly wanders off by herself, she becomes lost in a wilderness maze full of peril and terror.

In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, hundreds of desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed, 15 are wounded. The killer escapes.

In another part of town, months later, a retired cop named Bill Hodges is still haunted by the unsolved crime. When he gets a crazed letter from someone who self-identifies as the "perk" and threatens an even more diabolical attack, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on preventing another tragedy.

Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again. Only Bill Hodges, with a couple of highly unlikely allies, can apprehend the killer before he strikes again. And they have no time to lose, because Brady's next mission, if it succeeds, will kill or maim thousands.

An unspeakable crime. A confounding investigation. At a time when the Stephen King brand has never been stronger, he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories. An 11-year-old boy's violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City's most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad. As the investigation expands and horrifying answers begin to emerge, King's propulsive story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can.

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