He sure knows how to find the horror in humanity. That’s not to say that King’s book didn’t occasionally make us pull the covers up over our head.

This isn’t just great genre fiction, it’s simply great fiction. All the novellas in If It Bleeds are filled with King’s trademark dark freakiness and sympathetic characters and showcase his perfectly tuned ear for the rhythms of everyday dialogue. The awesomely weird “The Life of Chuck” traces a surreal technological apocalypse back to one seemingly regular guy, while the funnily self-deprecating “Rat” follows a frustrated writer who makes a deal with a force even creepier than the devil. What’s better than a new novella by Stephen King? How about four of them, all bundled together? There’s the shivers-inducing story of a teenager who discovers he can communicate with a deceased friend and a mystery involving detective Holly Gibney-a beloved recurring King character from The Outsider and the Bill Hodges series-who’s hot on the trail of a supernatural predator. “An adroit vehicle to showcase the…nature of evil” ( The Boston Globe), If It Bleeds is “exactly what I wanted to read right now,” says Ruth Franklin in The New York Times Book Review. Harrigan, and the sweetness of this late-in-life connection is its own reward. Holly is reminded that friendship is not only life-affirming but can be life-saving. There is also evil’s opposite, which in King’s fiction often manifests as friendship. One of King’s great concerns is evil, and in If It Bleeds, there’s plenty of it. If these novellas show King’s range, they also prove that certain themes endure. And in “Rat,” a struggling writer must contend with the darker side of ambition.

“The Life of Chuck” explores, beautifully, how each of us contains multitudes. Harrigan’s Phone” an intergenerational friendship has a disturbing afterlife. Mercedes trilogy and The Outsider) must face her fears, and possibly another outsider-this time on her own. In the title story, reader favorite Holly Gibney (from the Mr. The four brilliant tales in If It Bleeds prove as iconic as their predecessors. Many of his novellas have been made into iconic films, including “The Body” ( Stand by Me) and “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” ( Shawshank Redemption). Readers adore Stephen King’s novels, and his novellas are their own dark treat, briefer but just as impactful and enduring as his longer fiction. Harrigan’s Phone”- now a Netflix original film starring Donald Sutherland and Jaeden Martell!įrom the legendary storyteller and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary collection of four new “exceptionally compelling novellas that reaffirm mastery of the form” ( The Washington Post).

If it bleeds mr harrigan's phone