King, Stephen:
CARRIE
Garden City: Doubleday, 1974. First edition.
Why read Carrie? Stephen King himself has said that he finds his early work "raw," and Brian De Palma's movie was so successful that we feel like we have read the novel even if we never have. The simple answer is that this is a very scary story, one that works as well--if not better--on the page as on the screen. Carrie White, menaced by bullies at school and her religious nut of a mother at home, gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers, powers that will eventually be turned on her tormentors. King has a way of getting under the skin of his readers by creating an utterly believable world that throbs with menace before finally exploding. He builds the tension in this early work by piecing together extracts from newspaper reports, journals, and scientific papers, as well as more traditional first- and third-person narrative in order to reveal what lurks beneath the surface of Chamberlain, Maine.
News item from the Westover (ME) weekly Enterprise, August 19, 1966: "Rain of Stones Reported: It was reliably reported by several persons that a rain of stones fell from a clear blue sky on Carlin Street in the town of Chamberlain on August 17th."
Although the supernatural pyrotechnics are handled with King's customary aplomb, it is the carefully drawn portrait of the little horrors of small towns, high schools, and adolescent sexuality that give this novel its power, and assures its place in the King canon. --Simon Leake
Near Fine with Very Good jacket. Book slightly cocked. DJ scuffed at extremities, faint tape ghost at head of spine. Dust jacket aged. Lightly edge worn. Original price on dust jacket ($5.95). "P6" on page 199.
$1500.00
King, Stephen
THE STAND
Garden City: Doubleday, 1978. First edition.
In 1978, science fiction writer Spider Robinson wrote a scathing review of The Stand in which he exhorted his readers to grab strangers in bookstores and beg them not to buy it.
The Stand is like that. You either love it or hate it, but you can't ignore it. Stephen King's most popular book, according to polls of his fans, is an end-of-the-world scenario: a rapidly mutating flu virus is accidentally released from a U.S. military facility and wipes out 99 and 44/100 percent of the world's population, thus setting the stage for an apocalyptic confrontation between Good and Evil.
"I love to burn things up," King says. "It's the werewolf in me, I guess.... The Stand was particularly fulfilling, because there I got a chance to scrub the whole human race, and man, it was fun! ... Much of the compulsive, driven feeling I had while I worked on The Stand came from the vicarious thrill of imagining an entire entrenched social order destroyed in one stroke."
There is much to admire in The Stand: the vivid thumbnail sketches with which King populates a whole landscape with dozens of believable characters; the deep sense of nostalgia for things left behind; the way it subverts our sense of reality by showing us a world we find familiar, then flipping it over to reveal the darkness underneath. Anyone who wants to know, or claims to know, the heart of the American experience needs to read this book. --Fiona Webster
Near Fine with Very Good jacket. Light spotting to front board. Dust jacket lightly edge worn and soiled and with very tidy tear at upper front
$500.00
King, Stephen
THE SHINING
Garden City: Doubleday, 1977. First edition.
Nashville Banner
This chilling novel will haunt you, and make your blood run cold and your heart race with fear.
Cosmopolitan
Guaranteed to frighten you into fits...freezing terror...with a climax that is literally explosive!
"Twenty-seven years after its publication, The Shining remains a visceral, gripping read that showcases Stephen King's unfathomable powers to hypnotize and terrify readers."
Very Good with Near Fine jacket. Upper corners bumped. Head and tail of spine lightly worn. Dust jacket very lightly edge worn and aged.
$500.00
King, Stephen
THE ART OF DARKNESS
New York; New American Library, 1984. First edition, LATER printing. Black and white photos.
For those who want better to understand and enjoy the stories produced by this wizard of words, for serious students and avid fans, this first authoritative book-length study is an invaluable guide and fascinating reading.
Near Fine with Very Good dust jacket. DJ lightly edge worn.
$20.00
King, Stephen
GERALD'S GAME - SPECIAL BOXED ABA EDITION
New York: Viking, 1992. First edition. Boxed edition published for the ABA Convention. Precedes trade edition. About 2000 of these were printed.
From Publishers Weekly
While this is one of the best-written stories King has ever published, it will offend many through sheer bad taste. Jessie and Gerald Burlingame have been married for 20 years. Kinky sex is Gerald's game; lately he has taken to handcuffing his wife to the bedposts. During one such session, via a series of bizarre circumstances, Jessie accidentally kills her husband, and for the next 28 hours she is trapped. King effectively uses this tragicomic conceit to take us deep into the mind of "Goodwife Burlingame." sic For the first third of the book he is at the top of his form, creating in Jessie one of his most intense character studies. Then, Jessie's ruminations lead her to remember a long-repressed episode of incest that is startling not because it becomes a central element of the plot, but because the details of the sexual relationship between father and daughter are salaciously--and lengthily--described. The gory stuff--how Jessie escapes her handcuffs, for example--is prime King
Fine in box. Box lightly sunned.
$100.00
King, Stephen text. F-stop Fitzgerald, photographs.
NIGHTMARES IN THE SKY.
New York; Viking, 1988. First edition.
Gargoyles in their manifold glory, from the small, twisted and misshapen, to the majestic and terrible, this coffee table collection of the rooftop monsters of New York is highlighted by text composed by none other than Stephen King. A lovely and atmospheric gathering of these sculpted nightmares, captured at varying angles and conditions of shadow, light, and sometimes in the rain, deftly calculated to heighten the effect of staring these treasures almost in the eye. - Ellie Reasoner