Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

Stephen King is a master at writing and creativity. He delivers some of his best work in the new collection.

Full Dark, No Stars is a collection of four, short stories. Each grab your attention in there own unique way and keep you up reading much later than necessary.

The characters, settings, plot and emotions are superb in each story.

The first story, "1922" is very reminiscent of Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment. King's delivery makes you squirm in your seat.

The second story, "Big Driver" is about revenge. If you pay close attention to details, King lets you know early on who is to blame. This is an engaging read that will make you think twice about trusting seemingly trust worthy individuals.

The third story," Fair Extension" got to me the most in terms of emotions. It is the shortest story and perhaps the best one. I don't want to give anything away and I feel that discussing it would take away from reading this particular tale.

The fourth and final one, " The Good Marriage" is very good. It is about finding out that the person you thought you knew - isn't at all whom them seem to be.

This is not the book to read before bed (my mistake!) Unless you like double checking locks on doors and windows and looking under the bed. Right now I'm cuddling with my ferocious chihuahua and hoping that after I finish this, I will get a dreamless sleep.


Grade: A




Synopsis [B&N]

"I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger . . ." writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up "1922," the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness.

In "Big Driver," a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself.

"Fair Extension," the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment.

When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband. It’s a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends a good marriage.

Like Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight, which generated such enduring films as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, Full Dark, No Stars proves Stephen King a master of the long story form.