Stephen King - The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

A master storyteller at his best—the O. Henry Prize winner Stephen King delivers a generous collection of stories, several of them brand-new, featuring revelatory autobiographical comments on when, why, and how he came to write (or rewrite) each story.

Since his first collection, Nightshift, published thirty-five years ago, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. In this new collection he assembles, for the first time, recent stories that have never been published in a book. He introduces each with a passage about its origins or his motivations for writing it.

There are thrilling connections between stories; themes of morality, the afterlife, guilt, what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past. “Afterlife” is about a man who died of colon cancer and keeps reliving the same life, repeating his mistakes over and over again. Several stories feature characters at the end of life, revisiting their crimes and misdemeanors. Other stories address what happens when someone discovers that he has supernatural powers—the columnist who kills people by writing their obituaries in “Obits;” the old judge in “The Dune” who, as a boy, canoed to a deserted island and saw names written in the sand, the names of people who then died in freak accidents. In “Morality,” King looks at how a marriage and two lives fall apart after the wife and husband enter into what seems, at first, a devil’s pact they can win.

Magnificent, eerie, utterly compelling, these stories comprise one of King’s finest gifts to his constant reader—“I made them especially for you,” says King. “Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth.”

A thrilling collection of 20 stories - some brand new, some published in magazines, all entirely brilliant and collected for the first time - with a wonderful bonus: in addition to his introduction to the whole collection, King gives readers a fascinating introduction to each story with autobiographical comments on their origins and motivation.

The No. 1 best-selling writer has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of novellas and short story fiction since his first collection was published. He describes the nature of the form in his introduction to the book: 'There's something to be said for a shorter, more intense experience. It can be invigorating, sometimes even shocking, like...a beautiful curio for sale laid out on a cheap blanket at a street bazaar.'

Effervescent yet poignant, juxtaposing the everyday against the unexpected, these stories comprise one of King's finest gifts to his constant reader as well as to those fascinated by the autobiographical insights in his celebrated non-fiction title On Writing.

“Introduction” read by Stephen King
“Mile 81” read by Thomas Sadoksi
“Premium Harmony” read by Will Patton
“Batman and Robin Have an Altercation” read by Santino Fontana
“The Dune” read by Edward Herrmann
“Bad Little Kid” read by Dylan Baker
“A Death” read by Cotter Smith
“The Bone Church” read by Cotter Smith
“Morality” read by Mare Winningham
“Afterlife” read by Dylan Baker
“Ur” read by Holter Graham
“Herman Wouk Is Still Alive” read by Brooke Bloom and Kathleen Chalfant
“Under the Weather” read by Peter Friedman
“Blockade Billy” read by Craig Wasson
“Mister Yummy” read by Peter Friedman
“Tommy” read by Stephen King
“The Little Green God of Agony” read by Hope Davis
“That Bus Is Another World” read by Fred Weller
“Obits” read by Fred Weller
“Drunken Fireworks” read by Tim Sample
“Summer Thunder” read by Will Patton


Read by Read by Stephen King, Dylan Baker, Brooke Bloom, Hope Davis, Kathleen Chalfant, Santino Fontana, Peter Friedman
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Listening Length: 19 hours and 16 minutes
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Audible.com Release Date: November 3, 2015
Language: English
ASIN: B014GCUHMI