Me: “Please read Stephen King! It will change your life!”
Everyone else: “But where do I start? He’s written so many books. It’s overwhelming! I don’t have the time or energy to find the one that’s right for me.”
Don’t worry, I did it for you. I compiled a list of Stephen King’s top 10 books (actually 14). Pick the one that interests you most!
10. The Long Walk (1979)
Have you ever been out walking on a beautiful spring day and thought to yourself: “I could walk forever?” I certainly have, but reading The Long Walk changed that. The novel is set in a dystopian United States, where a military dictatorship rules the nation with an iron fist. Every year, 100 boys between the ages of 12 and 18 sign up to walk for a grand prize of anything they want. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. They don’t simply sign up to walk; they sign up to walk until they can’t. Once their pace lags under four miles per hour, they receive a warning. Their third warning is their last. Then they are shot. There is no quitting in the Long Walk. No whining that you changed their mind or begging to be set free. There is only walking or death. Changes your thoughts on walking forever, doesn’t it?
9. Tie: Sleeping Beauties (2017) & Doctor Sleep (2013)
Stephen King co-wrote Sleeping Beauties with his son Owen King, who clearly inherited his father’s talent. The two created a testosterone-filled, yet surprisingly feminist, world where women suffer from a sleep disease. They are terrified to fall asleep because those who do haven’t been waking up. Except for one woman. The seemingly demonic version of your typical feminist hero urges the men to fight, to “Cry ‘havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.” Because ultimately the women will decide if they want to wake up. And she wants them to decide not to.
Doctor Sleep is the second book in King’s The Shining duology, with The Shining’s young protagonist Dan Torrance now a grown man. Every child wishes for superpowers. But imagine having powers that force you to psychically witness a young boy get slaughtered, powers that make you the target of a quasi-immortal tribe hell-bent on feeding on your power, on sucking you dry. Young Abra Stone is living this nightmare, and she needs Dan’s help to survive it.
8. Tie: Misery (1987) & “Apt Pupil” (1982)
Misery is by far the most gruesome novel I’ve ever read. It was the first Stephen King book I read that required me to set it down multiple times and think: “Oh God.” This psychological-horror-thriller centers around novelist Paul Sheldon and his psychotic, self-proclaimed number one fan Annie Wilkes. The former nurse rescues him from a near-fatal car crash. But she drugs him. She forces him to drink soapy water. She cuts off his foot. And then she gets mean.
If you’re squeamish, go no farther. If you want to read as the master of horror dissects, in grisly detail, every one of Annie’s violent mood swings and exactly what it feels like to have your foot chopped off with an ax, and then cauterized with a torch, go on. Misery will not disappoint.
“Apt Pupil” is a short story in King’s novella collection Different Seasons. Many teenagers are aware of the Holocaust, but young Todd Bowden is more than aware of it. He’s obsessed — but not with learning more about the tragedies that occurred so that he can better understand how to fight such prejudice in his own time. He’s obsessed with German immigrant Arthur Denker, who he’s discovered is really the wanted Nazi criminal Kurt Dussander. He threatens the old man into reliving what Todd seems to consider his glory days. He’s a smart boy in control of the situation. But what happens when he loses control?
7. The Shining (1977)
What ensues when you take a recovering alcoholic with anger issues, his wife, and their psychic five-year-old son and drop them in a haunted hotel? The Torrance family arrives at the isolated Overlook Hotel with anticipation. They are ready for a fresh start. Unfortunately, the hotel has other plans.
6. It (1986)
The disturbing truth is that there are many people out there who have never heard of Stephen King. But even they have heard of It. The novel follows seven children who are prayed upon by an evil entity: “It.” It most commonly appears in the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and takes advantage of the fears common in young children in order to lure them to their deaths. Oh, and aside from its shapeshifting ability, It can also possess people and manipulate them to do its bidding. Nevertheless, after many harrowing events, the children vanquish the killer clown. But then It comes back.
5. The Outsider (2018)
King brings his typical gorish charm and the cast of NCIS together in this staggering novel. When little league coach, English teacher, and all-around great guy Terry Maitland is accused of raping and mutilating a young boy, the citizens of Flint City, Oklahoma are dumbfounded. Yet there is evidence. A mountain of it. However, Terry was at a conference in Cap City at the time of the murder, and he can prove it. Doppelgängers lose their magical appeal in The Outsider. When even your own identity can’t protect you, where do you turn?
4. 11/22/63 (2011)
What would you do if you could go back in time? Would you co-write Shakespeare’s plays with him? Would you fight in the Revolutionary War? Would you watch Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympic Games? In 11/22/63, protagonist Jake Epping’s friend grants him access to a portal allowing him to go back in time. His task? To prevent John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Simple, right? Add a beautiful lover, amnesia, and a nuclear wasteland to the mix, and things get a lot more complicated.
3. The Institute (2019)
No vampires. No shapeshifters. No flesh-eating bacteria. Monsters of the supernatural variety are absent from The Institute, yet this novel is another kind of terrifying. King delves into sheer human evil. There is no hiding behind demonic possession or out-of-body experiences. The monsters in this novel are adults who use innocent children with special abilities as weapons, aiming and firing them as they wish. They victimize these kids, and throw them out when they are spent. Or at least they did. Then they made the mistake of trying to weaponize 12-year-old Luke Ellis.
2. The Bill Hodges Trilogy (Mr. Mercedes (2014), Finders Keepers (2015), End of Watch (2016))
A retired police detective, a manic woman, and a bomb. A hermit writer, a prison escapee, and a young boy. A superpowered psychopath with an experimental drug and thirst for vengeance. These three books are pure detective drama, King-style. In a world where a cancer-ridden overweight man and a neurotic woman must fight to take down an individual who boasts about having no conscience, all bets are off.
1. Firestarter (1980)
“You’re a firestarter honey . . . just one big Zippo lighter” (Andy McGee, Firestarter).
This is the first King novel I’ve ever read, and it is what sent me tumbling down the wonderfully dark and exciting Stephen King black hole. After my mother read the book, she couldn’t stop raving about it. After my brother read it, he took a walk of solitude at 3 AM. After I read it, I picked up the next King book, and the next, and the next.
The novel features Charlie McGee, a young girl who can start fires with her mind. A girl whose mother was tortured, each fingernail ripped out slowly and with a surgeon’s precision, until she revealed her daughter’s location. She and her father Andy are on the run from The Shop, a group of human scum who want to control the little girl. On the run from Rainbird, a sociopathic war veteran who plans to befriend Charlie, and then kill her. But they don’t know something she knows: she can’t be controlled.
“‘You can stop them, Charlie,’ he said quietly” (Andy McGee, Firestarter).