Top 10 Stephen King Books

Over the course of his 50 year career, Stephen King’s name has become almost synonymous with the genre of horror. Publishing over 65 novels/novellas (not including his short stories, in which he has written hundreds), King’s influence in the authoring world cannot be understated. His works can be divisive, at one point being criticised for making the genre easily digestible as a whole. However, a good book is a good book, and King has written many in his time, not always sticking around in the horror genre either, dipping his toes into magical realism (The Green Mile), dark fantasy (The Dark Tower series), and science fiction (11/22/63). 

In the spirit of the spooky season, I’ve compiled a list of the top 10 Stephen King books, attempting to stick in the horror genre (though don’t come for me if a thriller or two makes their way in). Whether you’re a massive King fan, ready to fight me in the comments for my choices or the way I’ve ranked them, or someone who has somehow never tried one of his books and need an idea of where to start, this list might have something for you. As always, I’ll avoid major spoilers.

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10. Christine

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To begin with what I believe the most absurd plot on this list, Christine is centred around Arnie Cunningham and his new car, Christine. After purchasing, Arnie begins to physically change, his acne clearing up and no longer needing to wear his glasses. He becomes hardened, beginning to work for the petty criminal who owns the garage he fixes Christine in. His friend Dennis learns of the fatal history that surrounds the car including the former owner’s daughter choking to death in the backseat. After a similar near-death experience where she believes Christine was watching her choke on a hamburger, Arnie’s girlfriend Leigh teams up with Dennis to get rid of Christine once and for all. 

Personally, I don’t find the idea of a vengefully possessed car particularly scary, but if I’m honest, it’s the sheer ridiculousness of the plot that earns its spot on the list. King’s novels often dive from either serious or ludicrous, and out of all the ludicrous novels published under either his real name or his pseudonym, Christine is probably the best of them all. It’s just good enough for you to believe it’s better than the premise sets it out to be.

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9. Cujo

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Slightly more grounded than our first entry, Cujo tells the story of a good dog turning rabid after chasing a rabbit into a hole and being bitten on the nose by a bat, with a lot of domestic drama occurring around it. When Donna Trenton and her son, Tad, turn up to the local mechanic, and owner of Cujo, to get her car fixed, she finds herself isolated in the garage as the once peaceful Saint Bernard tries to continually attack the pair. With no way out, Donna has to do what she can to survive the ordeal until someone, anyone, can come and rescue her and her son. 

Though there is an implication at some point that Cujo is actually possessed (it appears King went through a ‘what can I possess today’ phase), the book feels a lot more grounded than many others, the true horror being what can happen if you don’t take care of your pets properly (having said that, it is an extreme version of events). King has a wonderful way of weaving heart-breaking moments in amongst the violence and the gore, the adult drama often a backdrop for Cujo’s attacks. Adding one final dash of distress before ending the novel, the final postscript reminds readers that Cujo was a good boy who wanted only to make his owners happy, and it was rabies that drove him to violence. Devastating, I need to go hug my dog now.

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8. Gerald’s Game

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A lesser known tale that became slightly prominent after the Netflix film of the same name dropped, Gerald’s Game takes a different turn into psychological horror, combining a fear of isolation and claustrophobia, as the wife of a successful lawyer finds herself handcuffed and trapped to the headboard after accidentally causing her husband to have a heart attack and die. Trapped with nothing but variations of herself, voices that represent an unearthed trauma that she is yet to face, Jessie finds herself desperate to escape, realising pretty soon that while being found handcuffed and nearly naked would be humiliating, the likelihood is she’ll die unless she finds a way out, and doing so means she’ll have dig up a memory she wishes to keep buried. 

Say what you want about King, he really does have a way of writing the most toe-curlingly disgusting scenes, where all you can do is read them with one eye on the page. While there is an argument that King likes to dive into all different kinds of trauma in order to round out a character (particularly his women characters), Jessie’s ability to find strength within her suffering in order to escape, is what brings the book to life. It’s one of his most isolating stories, for the most part being stuck to a headboard with one character, but there is an undeniable power to the character that earns its spot on the list.

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7. Firestarter

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A book dedicated to another of my favourite authors, Shirley Jackson, Firestarter deals with single parenthood and government conspiracies, as father-daughter duo Andy and Charlie find themselves on the run from an agency called the Shop after an operation to kidnap her goes awry. The Shop are desperate to learn and harness Charlie’s pyrokinetic powers, constantly following the pair wherever they go. While Andy has some psychic abilities himself, it is Charlie who has the real power within the book, able to create flames that can destroy buildings and melt bullets. 

I wouldn’t say Andy and Charlie are the healthiest example of parenting in literature, but on this list, they definitely are. While limited in his own abilities, Andy does all he can to protect his daughter from a secret government agency, trying his best to keep her as safe as possible, though perhaps realising she doesn’t necessarily need as much protection as he assumes. The reason this is further down the list than maybe people would like is because to me – King already created a character with incredible powers that can take on a whole mass of people at once. While the themes are different and the strengths in those characters differ, I personally just prefer one to the other. However, that doesn’t make this story any less memorable – it just happens to have a larger shadow looming over it.

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6. It

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With over 1,000 pages stacked between the covers, It is by far the longest book on our list and perhaps one of the longest books in King’s bibliography. Going far beyond the usual scope of horror, It opens up with Georgie as he chases down his paper boat in the torrential rain. After the boat drops into the drain, a mysterious figure calling themselves Pennywise the Clown lures Georgie to reach down to collect his boat, subsequently biting his arm off and, presumably, eating him. Thus begins the fight between It and the Losers Club, consisting of Georgie’s brother, Bill alongside Eddie, Ben, Stan, Richie, Mike and Beverly. Split between two decades, the 50s when they were kids and the 80s as adults, It goes from horrifying to bizarre in possibly the longest rollercoaster of your life. 

The book itself deals with a lot of themes and has many troubling scenes without the influence of Pennywise, but there is perhaps one scene within the sewers that has had a lasting legacy on its own – an uncomfortable and questionable moment, that when reading, makes you feel a bit like ‘what is happening’ (if you know, you know). Despite what can be triggering moments, Pennywise and the Loser Club of Derry lives on, with It being King’s most ambitious novel at the time. Ultimately though, I find it hard for over 1,000 pages to be justified. If you want to take on a challenging read, It may be the book for you, but be warned; there’s perhaps more style than substance.

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5. Salem’s Lot

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Once described as his own favourite out of all his books (this may have changed, given it’s been forty years since he ladled on that high praise) ‘Salem’s Lot is set in a small town where slowly darker forces begin to take over. When Ben Mears returns home to try and write his next novel, he slowly yet surely begins to understand that the people who have recently bought the house he intends to write about aren’t all that they appear to be. They’re vampires who, one by one, begin to either turn the town into one of their own, or kill those who resist. Ben, alongside a few fellow survivors, must battle the vampires in order to save their small town from being completely overrun from servants of evil.

Honestly, this book is pretty tense, and while you may often expect a happy ending or two, especially when facing centuries-old creatures such as vampires, King doesn’t always provide those in his stories. The fight of good versus evil doesn’t always have a clear path to victory, especially within the horror genre, and ‘Salem’s Lot is no different. The vampires take their time to slowly turn the townspeople, almost driving the survivors mad as they know what’s happening – it just feels very unsettling and eerie when reading it. There is of course, a heavy inspiration taken from the classic horror book Dracula, but there is also an Invasion of the Body-Snatchers vibe, leaving you questioning who is truly themselves. If nothing else, it’s a good monster read, which King doesn’t do too frequently, often saving the worst of humanity for the mortals.

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4. Misery

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Taking a turn into a more thriller based book, Misery is a tense and isolating story in which Paul Sheldon, the best-selling novelist of the Misery Chastain books, finds himself trapped in a cabin with his self-described number one fan, Annie Wilkes. Though Annie is fairly sweet, there are moments of unbridled rage that Paul becomes afraid of, especially as she begins to read through the final Misery book, where the titular character meets its end. She holds his much-needed (becoming newly addicted) painkillers hostage, demanding he writes a new book where Misery returns. Paul begins to write, and a game of cat and mouse begins, where you begin to wonder whether he will truly make his escape from Annie Wilke’s clutches, or if he will meet an untimely end. 

Misery is a response to the fans demanding more horror from King after his attempt to write an epic-fantasy novel, feeling as though he was chained to the genre that made him famous and while you may have already seen the 1990 film of the same name, but I can assure you, I don’t think the film has the same amount of tension as the novel does. It’s a slow build, for sure, with it at times being hard to stick with, but at some point, that switches and all you want to do is make sure Paul makes it out alive. There’s one scene in particular, where Paul leaves the vicinity of his room and starts to read a scrapbook of Annie’s – a frighteningly uneasy atmosphere encompasses that whole scene. It might not be a particularly violent horror (though the axe scene leaves rent free in my head now), you almost forget to breathe when reading the particularly unsettling scenes.

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3. Carrie

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Carrie is without a doubt my favourite King book. A memorable debut novel that launched the career of one of the best-selling novelists of all time, Carrie tells the story of, you guessed it, Carrie White, a hyper-religious girl with fantastical powers. Mocked relentlessly by her peers, and finding no sanctuary at home with her abusive mother, Carrie struggles to find her place in an unkind world. After an incident at the school, her classmate Sue Snell asks her boyfriend to take Carrie to prom, unaware her friend is planning the prank of a lifetime on Carrie as revenge. From there, chaos reigns as Carrie finally inflicts the same pain she has felt her whole life on the town. 

Now while this is my favourite book, I had to mark it down as number three on this list. With all the other novels that follow this book, it can be easily left behind, marked down as a stellar debut and nothing more – plus, to be honest, it’s not as scary as other novels King eventually goes on to write. If anything, it makes me feel sad. In later versions of the book, Stephen details the inspirations behind the character of Carrie, two separate girls who he had come across in his teaching career, both stories ending in a similar, tragic ending. If there is even a small, empathetic nerve in your body, the horror element may be lost on you entirely. Though, that really is where King’s writing shines – that while there may be a young girl exacting a violent, telekinetic revenge rampage on a town that has consistently wronged her, you still feel like it’s the worst of teenaged humanity that brought her to that point in the first place. My girl made her own prom dress, she just wanted to fit in.

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2. The Shining

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The book people often think of when they think of Stephen King (though, this may largely be because of Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of the same name), The Shining is probably when King’s strengths as an author started to shine (ha). Trapped within the Overlook Hotel, you can only read on in terror as Jack Torrance slowly becomes possessed by the evil spirits that haunt it, forcing his wife Wendy and his psychically-gifted son, Danny to do all they can to survive his murderous intent. The Shining  is one of my favourite examples of descents into madness within horror literature. While the film may have you believe otherwise, Jack’s turn from ‘recovering alcoholic trying to save his family’ to ‘alcoholic trying to murder his family’ is a much slower build. 

Once more, the book itself deals with issues beyond the man who tries to take an axe to the family, with Jack struggling with the results of his alcoholism and rage issues, including at one point harming Danny. You read a man fighting an inner conflict, a desire to be a good husband and father, with a desire to drink and cause destruction, no matter how great or small. Cabin fever and the isolating mania it causes takes a centre stage, alongside the powerful supernatural influence, all of which eventually takes a hold of Jack. It’s a longer battle than expected, and there are some incredibly memorable moments. It’s brilliant to read it for the first time, just as it’s brilliant to read it many times after.

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1. Pet Semetary

Image by Doubleday

Eventually inspiring a Ramones song of the same name, Pet Semetary follows Louis Creed, a professor who has recently moved to a new area with his family. After the loss of his young daughter’s cat, Louis buries it in the pet cemetery nearby, after which it’s resurrected, but is changed; it rips mice and birds apart, with no intention on eating them, and smells so bad, no one wants it around (hello, paging Phoebe Buffay). When his two year old son is hit by a speeding truck, Louis is overcome with despair. He digs up his son’s body and re-buries it in the pet cemetery – but he too, comes back changed, and not for the better. 

This may be a controversial option to have as my number one pick, but Pet Semetary is a novel that gripped me in a way that, despite the unnerving sense of dread I felt within each chapter, I unfortunately couldn’t at any point put it down, each vivid description unnerving me to my core. Dealing with themes of the all-encompassing intensity of grief and loss, Pet Semetary asks the question ‘what would you do to bring your loved one back’, quickly followed by ‘are you prepared to deal with the consequences of that choice?’ While his choices are driven by the kind of grief that drives you insane, a well-intentioned desire to have his son back, through it Louis must then decide how to deal with the aftermath of his choice. Terrifying but heart-breaking, it has all the traits that make a Stephen King novel truly incredible.

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Conclusion

Throughout this (incredibly long) list, I hope you’ve found something new to pick up and read this spooky season. Stephen King’s impact on the genre is long-lasting, and there is always something deeper going on beneath the surface of the pages (unless it’s Dreamcatchers). Make sure to let us know in the comments if you agree or disagree with the list!

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