I’ve just finished reading Stephen King’s latest short story compilation, Full Dark, No Stars. In January, I’d heard awesome reviews about it and couldn’t wait to get started on it!

Quoted from Publishers Weekly:

Eerie twists of fate drive the four longish stories in King’s first collection since Just After Sunset (2008). In “1922,” a farmer murders his wife to retain the family land she hopes to sell, then watches his life unravel hideously as the consequences of the killing suggest a near-supernatural revenge. “Big Driver” tells of an otherwise ordinary woman who discovers her extraordinary capacity for retribution after she is raped and left for dead. “A Good Marriage” explores the aftermath of a wife’s discovery of her milquetoast husband’s sinister secret life, while “Fair Extension,” the book’s most disturbing story, follows the relationship between a man and the best friend on whom he preternaturally shifts all his bad luck and misfortune. As in Different Seasons (1982), King takes a mostly nonfantastic approach to grim themes. Now, as then, these tales show how a skilled storyteller with a good tale to tell can make unsettling fiction compulsively readable.

Stephen King

These are “scenes” from the tales in the book. The nonfantastic approach makes each story that much more thrilling, because the lives of each of the main characters are sober and mundane…until they’re not.

Does one rat scare you?

What about many?

You have a gun for protection, but are you ready to use it?

What would you do if you found out your awesome spouse of 20 years isn’t who you thought they were?

Would you believe that someone is at the end of this road, waiting for you?

Sometimes I’ll be reading a story and have to read two sentences again, twice, thinking, “What the eff just happened?! Whoa!” I love that!

Full Dark, No Stars gets 3 out of 4 stars.