Full Dark, No Stars: Stories

Amazon.com Review Full Dark, No Stars , you know youre in for a treat--that is, if your idea of a good time is spent curled up in a ball wondering why-oh-why you started reading after dark. King fans (and those who have always wanted to give him a shot) will devour this collection of campfire tales where marriages sway under the weight of pitch-black secrets, greed and guilt poison and fester, and the only thing you can count on is that "there are always worse things waiting." Full Dark, No Stars features four one-sitting yarns showcasing King at his gritty, gruesome, giddy best, so be sure to check under the bed before getting started. --Daphne Durham Amazon Exclusive: Justin Cronin, Suzanne Collins, Margaret Atwood, and T.C. Boyle Review Stephen King's Full Dark, No Stars "King is Poe's modern heir, and no writer has a richer sense of the dark rooms in the human psyche and fiction's singular power to capture them." "Fast-paced and beautifully plotted, 'Big Driver' pulls you into Tess's fragmented mind and holds you hostage until the story concludes." "It wouldn't be Stephen King if somebody's messily bleeding neck did not sprout a huge white knob. As it were." "[King's] very ordinary-looking devil has no use for human souls, which, in these enervated times, 'have become poor and transparent things.'" From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Eerie twists of fate drive the four longish stories in King's first collection since Just After Sunset (2008). In "1922," a farmer murders his wife to retain the family land she hopes to sell, then watches his life unravel hideously as the consequences of the killing suggest a near-supernatural revenge. "Big Driver" tells of an otherwise ordinary woman who discovers her extraordinary capacity for retribution after she is raped and left for dead. "A Good Marriage" explores the aftermath of a wife's discovery of her milquetoast husband's sinister secret life, while "Fair Extension," the book's most disturbing story, follows the relationship between a man and the best friend on whom he preternaturally shifts all his bad luck and misfortune. As in Different Seasons (1982), King takes a mostly nonfantastic approach to grim themes. Now, as then, these tales show how a skilled storyteller with a good tale to tell can make unsettling fiction compulsively readable. (Nov.) (c) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King, four "disturbing, fascinating" ( The Washington Post ) novellas—including the story "1922," a Netflix original film—that explore the dark side of human nature. "The pages practically turn themselves" ( USA TODAY ) in Full Dark, No Stars , an unforgettable collection centered around the theme of retribution. In "1922," a violence awakens inside a man when his wife proposes selling off the family homestead, setting in motion a grisly train of murder and madness. In "Big Driver", a mystery writer is brutally assaulted by a stranger along a Massachusetts back road and plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself. In "Fair Extension," making a deal with the devil not only saves a man from terminal illness but also provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment. In "A Good Marriage," the trust forged by more than twenty years of matrimony is irrevocably shattered when a woman makes a chance discovery leading to the horrifying implications of just who her husband really is. Like Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight , which generated such enduring hit films as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me , King's Full Dark, No Stars is a "page-turner" ( The New York Times ) "as gripping as his epic novels" ( St. Louis Post-Dispatch ), and "an extraordinary collection, thrillingly merciless, and a career high point" ( The Telegraph , UK). "I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger . . ." writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up "1922," the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness. In "Big Driver," a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself. "Fair Extension," the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment. When her husband of more... Full Dark, No Stars, published in November 2010, is a collection of four novellas by American author Stephen King, all dealing with the theme of retribution. One of the novellas, 1922, is set in Hemingford Home, Nebraska, which is the home of Mother Abagail from King's epic novel The Stand (1978), the town the adult Ben Hanscom moves to in It (1986), and the setting of the short story "The Last Rung on the Ladder" (1978). The collection won the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Best Collection, and the 2011 British Fantasy Award for Best Collection. Also, 1922 was nominated for the 2011 British Fantasy Award for Best Novella. Contains: - [1922][2] - [A Good Marriage][3] - [Big Driver][4] - Fair Execution [1]: https://www.stephenking.com/library/story_collection/full_dark_no_stars.html [2]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19781625W/1922 [3]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19781665W/A_Good_Marriage [4]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19781688W/Big_Driver Prolific Author Stephen King Presents A Collection Of Four New Novellas. In The Story 1922, A Man Plunges Into The Depths Of Madness When His Wife Attempts To Sell Off The Family Home. A Mystery Writer, Who Was Beaten And Raped While Driving Home From Her Book Club, Plots Her Revenge In Big Driver. Diagnosed With A Deadly Cancer, A Man Makes A Deal With The Devil In Fair Extension. And In A Good Marriage, A Woman Discovers Her Husband's Darker Side While He Is Away On A Business Trip. 1922 -- Big Driver -- Fair Extension -- A Good Marriage. Stephen King. 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.