
I always enjoyed reading Stephen King.
I get swept along by the quality of his writing and wrapped up in the flawed, very human characters he creates.
And yet me TBR pile is peppered with unread Stephen King books.
Mostly, this is because many of the books are so long that I hesitate to start them, even though I know that once I do, the pages flash by and I find myself making extra time in my day to read a little more.
So I’ve deiced that in 2026 I will take twelve Stephen King books off my TBR pile.
I’ve selected books that date from 1975 to 2019. All of them are new to me, although I’ve seen screen adaptations of four of them. One is a novella. One is a collection of short stories. The rest are novels, some of them very long novels.
I’m going to read them in the order that they were published. Given their length, I’m not going to try for one a month. I’m simply going to start the next King book as soon as I finish its predecessor.
Here are the books I’ve picked.

‘Salem’s Lot is a small New England town with white clapboard houses, tree-lined streets and solid church steeples. Of course there are tales of strange happenings – but no more than in any other such town.
Ben Mears has returned to the Lot to write a novel and exorcise the terrors that have haunted him since childhood – since the event he witnessed at the Marsten House.
He finds the house has been rented by a newcomer, a man who causes Ben some unease. And then things start to happen: a child disappears, a dog is brutally killed – nothing unusual, except the list keeps growing…
‘Salem’s Lot (1975) was Stephen King’s second novel. I’ve never read it or seen any of the screen adaptations so I get to come at it fresh and see what Stephen King’s writing was like fifty years ago.

A year ago, he was an upstanding instructor of English at Harrison State College. Now Andy is on the run with his daughter. A pigtailed girl named Charlie. A girl with an unimaginably terrifying gift.
A gift which could be useful to corrupt authorities. Soon Charlie will be caught up in the menace of a fateful drug experiment and a sinister government ploy . . .
Firestarter (1980) was Stephen King’s first speculative fiction novel, a genre in which I think he excels. I saw the the movie adaptaion starring a very young Drew Barrymore when it came out in 1984, but I haven’t watched the 2022 adaptation starring Ryan Kiera Armstrong but I may get to it once I’ve read the book.

The house looked right, felt right to Dr Louis Creed. Rambling, old, unsmart and comfortable. A place where the family could settle, the children grow and play and explore. The rolling hills and meadows of Maine seemed a world away from the fume-choked dangers of Chicago.
Only the occasional big truck out on the two-lane highway, grinding up through the gears, hammering down the long gradients, growled out an intrusive threat. But behind the house and far away from the road: that was safe. Just a carefully cleared path up into the woods where generations of local children have processed with the solemn innocence of the young, taking with them their dear departed pets for burial.
A sad place maybe, but safe. Surely a safe place. Not a place to seep into your dreams, to wake you, sweating with fear and foreboding.
Pet Sematary (1983) is a book that Stephen King thinks is one of his scariest. I’ve only seen the 1989 movie. I wasn’t impressed, so I guess the book has to be better. I was puzzled by the speilling of Sematary in the title so I looked it up and an explanation that I enjoyed HERE.

Roused by a single drop of blood, Rosie Daniels wakes up to the chilling realisation that her husband is going to kill her. And she takes flight – with his credit card.
Alone in a strange city, Rosie begins to build a new life: she meets Bill Steiner and she finds an odd junk shop painting, Rose Madder, which strangely seems to want her as much as she wants it.
But it’s hard for Rosie not to keep looking over her shoulder. Rose-maddened and on the rampage, Norman is a corrupt cop with a dog’s instinct for tracking people. And he’s getting close. Rosie can feel how close he is getting….
Rose Madder (1995) is a thriller with a gender wars subtext.

Welcome to Desperation.
Once a thriving copper-mining town in the middle of the Nevada desert, Desperation is now eerily abandoned. It’s the last place that travellers like the Carver family, bound for vacation, and writer Johnny Marinville, astride his Harley, would expect to be stopped and charged. But Desperation still has a local cop – a unique regulator who patrols the wilderness highway.
The secrets buried in Desperation are as terrifying as the forces summoned to encounter them. A terrifying transformation is taking place, and the travellers will soon discover the true meaning of desperation….
Desperation (1996) is another thriller, this time set in a spooky small town, not in King’s usual Maine milieu but in the Nevada desert. I’m looking forward to seeing how well Stephen King conjures that environment.

‘Civilization slipped into its second dark age on an unsurprising track of blood but with a speed that could not have been foreseen by even the most pessimistic futurist. By Halloween, every major city from New York to Moscow stank to the empty heavens and the world as it had been was a memory.’
The event became known as The Pulse. The virus was carried by every cell phone operating within the entire world. Within hours, those receiving calls would become insane, or die.
In Boston, a young artist, Clayton Riddell, flees the explosive heart of the city. Clay’s son has a little red cell phone. Often out of juice. But what if this time the battery is full? Clay has to reach his son, before his son reaches for his phone….
Cell (2006) is the first twenty-first century book on my list and King uses it to turn a ubiquitous piece of technology into an exitenstial threat. I’m looking forward to this one

Every marriage has two hearts, one light and one dark.
Lisey knew it when she first fell for Scott. And now he’s dead, she knows it for sure.
Lisey was the light to Scott Landon’s dark for twenty-five years. As his wife, only she saw the truth behind the public face of the famous author – that he was a haunted man whose bestselling novels were based on a terrifying reality.
Now Scott has gone, Lisey wants to lock herself away with her memories. But the fans have other ideas. And when the sinister threats begin, Lisey realises that, just as Scott depended on her strength – her light – to live, so she will have to draw on his darkness to survive.
Lisey’s Story (2006) is a psychological thriller about a writer’s wife. It was made into a mini-series starring Julianne Moore in 2021 which hasn’t been released on DVD yet. I’m hoping Apple will get over their aversion for a technology that they didn’t invent and can’t impose a 30% margin on.

Duma Key is the engaging, fascinating story of a man who discovers an incredible talent for painting after a freak accident in which he loses an arm.
He moves to a “new life” in Duma Key, off Florida’s West Coast – a deserted strip, part beach, part weed-tangled reef, owned by a patroness of the arts whose twin sisters went missing in the 1920s. Duma Key is where out-of-season hurricanes tear lives apart and a powerful undertow lures lost and tormented souls.
Here, Freemantle is inspired to paint the amazing sunsets. But soon the paintings become predictive, even dangerous. Freemantle knows the only way forward is to discover what happened to the twin sisters and uncover the secret of the strange old lady who holds the key.
The story is about friendship, about the bond between a father and his daughter, and about memory, truth and art. It is also is a metaphor for the life and inspiration of a writer, and an exploration of the nature, power, and influence of fiction.
Duma Key 2008 won the 2008 Bram Stoker Award for best novel. The woo woo factor may be too high for me in this novel but I’m hoping for the best.

Is it possible to fully know anyone? Even those we love the most? What tips someone over the edge to commit a crime?
In ‘1922’, a story which was adapted into a Netflix original film, a Nebraska farmer, the turning point comes when his wife threatens to sell off the family homestead.
In ‘Big Driver’, a cozy mystery writer plots a savage revenge after a brutal encounter with a stranger.
In ‘Fair Extension’, Dave Streeter gets the chance to cure himself from illness – if he agrees to impose misery on an old rival.
In ‘A Good Marriage’, Darcy Anderson discovers a box containing her husband’s dark and terrifying secrets – he’s not the man who keeps his nails short and collects coins. And now he’s heading home . . .
And readers have a treat in store, with a bonus story, ‘Under the Weather’.
Full Dark, No Stars (2010) is a collection of five short stories. I always enjoy King’s short fiction.

When an 11-year-old boy is found murdered, forensic evidence and reliable eyewitnesses undeniably point to the town’s popular Little League coach. But the jailed suspect, arrested in a public spectacle, has an alibi, and further research convinces Detective Ralph Anderson that the coach was indeed out of town. So how can he have been in two places at the same time?
I set Mr Mercedes to one side becuase I found it upsetting, so I didn’t read the trilogy. Then I saw the 2020 miniseries version of ‘The Outsider’ and was hooked. I read the following Holly books and stories, Now I want to go back to the 2018 novel.

Set in Castle Rock, Elevation is moving story about a man whose mysterious affliction brings a small town together.
Castle Rock is a small town where word gets around quickly. That’s why Scott Carey wants to confide only in his friend Doctor Bob Ellis about his strange condition: he’s losing weight, without getting thinner, and the scales register the same when he is in his clothes or out of them, however heavy they are.
Scott also has new neighbours, who have opened a ‘fine dining experience’ in town, although it’s an experience being shunned by the locals; Deidre McComb and her wife, Missy Donaldson, don’t exactly fit in with the community’s expectations. And now Scott seems trapped in a feud with the couple over their dogs dropping their business on his lawn. Missy may be friendly, but Deidre is cold as ice.
As the town prepares for its annual Thanksgiving 12k run, Scott starts to understand the prejudices his neighbours face, and he tries to help. Unlikely alliances form, and the mystery of Scott’s affliction brings out the best in people who have indulged the worst in themselves and others.
Elevation 2018 is the only novella on my list. I’m hoping to read this around Thanksgiving.

Deep in the woods of Maine, there is a dark state facility where kids, abducted from across the United States, are incarcerated. In the Institute they are subjected to a series of tests and procedures meant to combine their exceptional gifts – telepathy, telekinesis – for concentrated effect.
Luke Ellis is the latest recruit. He’s just a regular 12-year-old, except he’s not just smart, he’s super-smart. And he has another gift which the Institute wants to use…
Far away in a small town in South Carolina, former cop Tim Jamieson has taken a job working for the local sheriff. He’s basically just walking the beat. But he’s about to take on the biggest case of his career.
Back in the Institute’s downtrodden playground and corridors where posters advertise ‘just another day in paradise’, Luke, his friend Kalisha and the other kids are in no doubt that they are prisoners, not guests. And there is no hope of escape.
But great events can turn on small hinges and Luke is about to team up with a new, even younger recruit, Avery Dixon, whose ability to read minds is off the scale. While the Institute may want to harness their powers for covert ends, the combined intelligence of Luke and Avery is beyond anything that even those who run the experiments – even the infamous Mrs Sigsby – suspect.
The Institute (2019) finishes my list with another speculative fiction novel. It was turned into a TV series in 2025.