6 Books you need to grapple Stephan King

on Sep 21, 2022

The birthday of the King of the Horror is upon us. So, we created a guide for you to read Stephan King's best. Going through his extended bibliography will take ages, but if you go by our suggestion, you'll be able to breeze through his very best. Following are the Stephan King books you should start with.

The Shining

The first book you should read to understand King's work is 'The Shining.' This cult classic has all the famous tropes for which Mr. King is known. It focuses on the family of a struggling writer with supernatural happenings in the background. Danny, the son, begins having visions and telepathic conversations with the cook while the hotel ghosts loom over them. The horror is more than just disturbing and makes you feel like this type of cabin fever can happen to anyone, and you see yourself in the father, the mother, and the son as they slowly dissolve into ghostly madness. With a great twist in the end, this book is perfect to begin to fall in love with Stephan King's books. Its sequel 'Doctor Sleep' will rejuvenate you when you return to the Overlook Hotel.

Salem's Lot

Salem's Lot or Carrie should be the second book to open more of Stephan King's signature form. This Mr. King's second book is a story of a writer and his son making their way back to their hometown, which slowly gets overrun with Vampires. There are many twists and turns as the tension and the mystery build, and the ending is one to cry for.

Misery

Enough of the supernatural horror; time for some psychological one. Misery is a book that spurns from the scariest nightmare that follows Stephen King around. And that is of a crazed fan that kidnaps her favorite author and forces him to write a book that she desires. The tension is limited to a room, but you can feel the trapped writer's pain and anguish. Misery reveals a lot about people's worst sides, and yet you can't feel for the crazy psychopath that kills actual people to get the ending she always desired.

The Dead Zone

This book was King's first hardcover bestseller. The book signaled his jump into the literary mainstream as a writer. It's fitting, then, that it's more of a science-fiction thought experiment than a horror novel. King's career-long obsession with time jumps and the ethical dilemmas surrounding them, a theme he would explore more definitively 32 years later with 11/22/63, are on full display here. However, the story is not about time travel. Instead, King's protagonist, one of his purest and truest heroes, finds himself afflicted with a mysterious psychic ability to see the pasts and futures of anyone he touches.

Who can forget pennywise? We all float here, and we all know about this one as it is one of the most famous works of Mr. King. The story centers on the lives of 6 children who fight the cosmic entity of the murderous, cannibalistic, shape-shifting clown not once but twice! The theme of growing up and fighting your childhood fears is King's favorite and comes full force in this 1000+ pages long book. The horror is eminent and can be felt in your bones, yet the ending is so sweet that you will keep coming back for more.

The Running Man

The Running Man, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider should come next as these are some of his best works. If you are too enthralled in the Stephan King books, read Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile to break from his usual style. Whichever books you read, you will notice how simple and down-to-earth his writing style is, but it will affect you as profoundly as it affects millions of people who have been King fans for generations. We wish him the happiest of birthdays and hope he keeps scaring us for ages to come.