There aren't many best-selling authors out there who still write novellas.
In publishing terms, the form is a tricky one: often too short to stand alone but too long to include in a short story collection, books in the 20,000-40,000 word range can sometimes hang in a kind of literary no man's land. It's tricky to make them work.
Stephen King's found a way, though. Sprinkled throughout the horror master's glorious 50-year career, nestled alongside his series, short story roundups and 400,000+ word epics, King has published a number of successful four-story novella collections.
And as a troublingly obsessed Stephen King fan, let me tell you this: they're well worth checking out. I sometimes think King's at his best when he's writing either very short, or very long novels. Some of the stories towards the end of this list are among my all-time favourites of his.
From time-swallowing monster to nightmarish, life-or-death competitions, here are all of King's novellas -- ranked from worst to best (or, in other words, from good to ridiculously good).
18. The Breathing Method (from Different Seasons)
What's it about?
A man in a strange story-telling club tells the grim tale of a woman learning a new technique for giving birth.
Ranking explanation
I'm putting this one at the bottom of the list purely because it hasn't stuck with me; it's one of the few Stephen King novellas that didn't really leave a mark. I remember liking the idea of a story-telling club in a weird, possibly multi-dimensional house, but the main bulk of the story -- the tale within the tale -- just wasn't memorable enough for me.
17. Blockade Billy (from The Bazaar of Bad Dreams)
What's it about?
A former baseball player recounts the story of a 1950s season when his team hired a mysterious player called William Blakely.
Ranking explanation
OK, this one's very subjective. The main problem here is I know literally nothing about baseball. The story is still fun, the character of "Blockade Billy" is creepy, and I imagine this one would be higher up the list of someone who's a fan of the sport. But for a clueless Brit like myself it just didn't have the same impact.
16. Roadwork (from The Bachman Books)
What's it about?
A man makes a violent stand against the construction company planning to demolish his home.
Ranking explanation
Again, this is going to be a very subjective one. When I read Roadwork, it was just after having finished the two stories it sits alongside: The Long Walk and The Running Man. I loved both of those stories very much (you can read my excitable wafflings about them both further down this list), and perhaps because of that Roadwork didn't suck me in quite as quickly. One day I'll go back and give it another go, but in the meantime it's a victim of its two companions.
15. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (from Different Seasons)
What's it about?
A man imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit plots to escape.
Ranking explanation
For a novella that inspired what's often thought of as one of the greatest films of all time, you might be wondering why this one isn't higher up. Don't get me wrong, it's a great story: the characters are brilliant, and it's not hard to see why it made such a captivating film. The thing is, though, I saw the film first. Perhaps because I knew what was coming when I read it -- and I had such a clear picture of the movie in my mind -- the novella was slightly overshadowed.
14. 1922 (from Full Dark, No Stars)
What's it about?
A farmer plans to murder his wife with the help of their teenage son.
Ranking explanation
Like the majority of the stories on this list, 1922 is part of a collection of four novellas. Like the other three tales in Full Dark, No Stars, it's a nasty, fast-paced read about the darker side of the human condition. There's no doubt that it's a great story, but for me -- possibly because I didn't connect with the 1920s setting quite as much -- it was overshadowed by the other tales it's been grouped alongside.
13. Fair Extension (from Full Dark, No Stars)
What's it about?
A terminally ill man makes a dark bargain with a stranger to get an extension on his life.
Ranking explanation
This is another enjoyably unpleasant story, and a darkly fun twist on the deal-with-the-devil morality tale. I actually really like this one (it's packed with exactly the kind of disturbing detail that make King's stories feel so real), and the only reason it's further down the list is that you could argue it's more of a short story (or warped fable) than a novella.
12. The Sun Dog (from Four Past Midnight)
What's it about?
A 15-year-old boy gets a Polaroid camera for his birthday, only to discover it can only print pictures of one thing: a large, black dog, which is slowly getting closer to the lens with every picture he takes.
Ranking explanation
The thing I love most about this story is the idea: there's something about the thought of a camera acting as window to some king of nightmarish creature that's just brilliantly, terrifyingly fun. The only reason this one doesn't make it higher up in the list is down to the collection it sits in: for me it's the weakest of the four (very good) stories that appear in Four past Midnight.
11. Secret Window, Secret Garden (from Four Past Midnight)
What's it about?
An isolated author gets threatened by a stranger who claims the author plagiarised his book.
Ranking explanation
Yep: this one's the basis for that Johnny Depp film Secret Window. Forget about that, though: the book is better. The stranger who appears on the main character's doorstep is impressively ominous, and the story has a kind of helpless, inevitable feel that spirals quickly towards the final twist. It's a good one, in short, and the only reason it doesn't come higher is because the other two stories in Four Past Midnight are even stronger.
10. Rage (originally published in The Bachman Books)
What's it about?
A disturbed high school student holds his classmates hostage.
Ranking explanation
This is a difficult one, because Rage is currently out of print. It used to appear in The Bachman Books, but King asked them to stop printing it after fears the story may have influenced several real-life school shooters. I read it a few years ago, in an old copy of The Bachman Books I found in a charity shop. Although it's not easy to find, I wanted to include it on this list and judge it purely on its worth as a story. I know some people aren't keen on it -- there's a lot of raw anger in the story that some argue shows immaturity -- but I thought it was a very compelling (if disturbing) read. It's incredibly tense and fast-paced, and -- as Stephen King himself acknowledged in his essay Guns -- the book doesn't flinch from telling "unpleasant truths" about high school life.
9. A Good Marriage (from Full Dark, No Stars)
What's it about?
A woman discovers a horrible secret about her husband.
Ranking explanation
Plenty of Stephen King's stories are disturbing, but A Good Marriage -- for me, at least -- was one of the toughest to read. I went in thinking it would be a dark thriller (sort of a creepy, you-don't-know-who-you're-living style page-turner) and I guess in some ways it is -- but it's also grimly realistic, and packed full of some very unpleasant details. It doesn't hold back, in other words, but I think the story is all the stronger for it. Fair warning, though: you'll have to be in the right mood for this one.
8. Big Driver (from Full Dark, No Stars)
What's it about?
After surviving a horrendous ordeal, a mystery writer plots revenge on the man who attacked her.
Ranking explanation
This one falls into the same category as A Good Marriage -- it's a hard read, but a rewarding one. Once again, King writes the villains with the kind of grim detail that makes them almost unpleasantly realistic. But the story is tense and fast-paced, and I found myself speeding through it with gritted teeth to see how things would turn out.
7. The Langoliers (from Four Past Midnight)
What's it about?
A group of passengers on an airplane wake up to find everybody else in the world has disappeared.
Ranking explanation
Fair warning: we're now at the stage of the list where I basically love all the stories, so apologies in advance if I start waffling on sycophantically. The Langoliers deserves credit for just how damn awesome and original the idea behind it is -- I don't want to reveal too much, but the way the central mystery unfolds is handled beautifully. The characters are also great; I still have a picture of them in my head years after reading the story, which is no mean feat. Perhaps this one's only weakness is the arrival of the Langoliers themselves; for me they weren't quite as terrifying as I'd hoped, even if the idea of what they do was.
6. The Library Policeman (from Four Past Midnight)
What's it about?
A man is harassed by a nightmarish stranger after he fails to return a library book on time.
Ranking explanation
This one fuses the childhood terrors of It with the real-world horrors addressed in Full Dark, No Stars -- and the result is chillingly effective. The Library Policeman has all the classic elements of a good Stephen King story: an evocative setting, a decades-old monster, and a group of unlikely (but ultimately very likeable) heroes. Perhaps the thing it does most effectively, though, is to evoke the fears we all have when we're younger -- fears which sometimes get buried, but never really go away.
5. Apt Pupil (From Different Seasons)
What's it about?
A teenager strikes up a disturbing relationship with a Nazi war criminal.
Ranking explanation
The best part of this story is the characters, and the way the power dynamic shifts between them as the narrative progresses. The whole thing's got a horribly inevitable quality to it that's impossible to turn away from. At times you don't want to look, but you feel you have to. In this way Apt Pupil is comfortably the darkest story in Different Seasons -- it wouldn't feel out of place in King's later collection, Full Dark, No Stars -- but it's also a gripping page-turner.
4. The Running Man (from The Bachman Books)
What's it about?
In a dystopian future, a man enters a life-or-death gameshow in order to raise money for his family.
Ranking explanation
The story with this one is that Stephen King wrote it during a week-long break while he was still teaching. It's not that surprising, either -- The Running Man is probably one of his quickest page-turners, a book you could comfortably race through in one sitting. In a nutshell, the main character (an entertainingly badass guy called Richards) enters a gameshow where the aim is to evade capture from a team of "Hunters" for as long as possible. Every hour you don't get caught means more money for your family. When you're caught, you die. It's a brutally addictive premise that's written brilliantly, from the tense beginning to the unexpected ending. The fact that you know it can only really end one way doesn't detract -- it just adds to the pace.
3. The Mist (from Skeleton Crew)
What's it about?
A group of people become trapped in a supermarket after a strange mist fills the outside world.
Ranking explanation
The only thing I'd change about this story would be to make it longer -- I really, really didn't want it to end. The premise is gripping, the characters are great, and whole thing is a perfect example of a tactic King often employs -- combining other-worldly monsters with a human threat. In this way The Mist is like The Dome's evil little brother -- it's about the way strangers interact with each other when they're forced into an unnatural micro-society, and the closer-to-home horrors that can spring from that situation. On a side note, Frank Darabont's film adaptation is also well worth a watch (it never seems to get enough credit, but I thought it was great).
2. The Body (from Different Seasons)
What's it about?
A group of four boys go on a hike to try and find a dead body.
Ranking explanation
This is a beautiful story, and it doesn't hurt that it was also adapted into Stand by Me, which is one of my favourite films. In short, this is King writing about one of the topics King does best: childhood. The relationships between the boys, the threat of the bullies, the helpless nostalgia evoked by a man thinking back to a turning point in his childhood -- it's all handled brilliantly. The fact that the tale is told by a future, adult narrator only adds to the poignancy.
1. The Long Walk (from The Bachman Books)
What's it about?
A futuristic competition which involves 100 teenage boys walking continuously, without dropping their pace below a certain speed, until there's only one remaining survivor.
Ranking explanation
You know a book really has a hold of you when all you want to do is keep reading it; you look for any excuse to get back into it; you don't want to put it down; you need to find out how the whole thing ends. From start to finish, The Long Walk is exactly like that. It's like a combination of The Body and The Running Man -- a page turner that's also a brilliantly written depiction of teenage companionship. Managing a large group of characters in a relatively short story is no easy task, but the characters in The Long Walk are ones you genuinely grow to love -- and that just makes it all the more emotional when they're slowly snatched away from you.
Topics Books Stephen King
