Adult

Since his first collection, NIGHTSHIFT, published 35 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.

After 10 years as a captive of kidnapper Henry Gemmerle, Joan Crimmins eludes the media and spurns the family who failed to search for her. Instead, she settles in the remote Maine town of Bearkill. But when Gemmerle flees a prison clinic and a 16-year-old Bearkill girl vanishes, Aroostook County Sheriff’s deputy Lizzie Snow knows that Joan’s painful past has just become another young woman’s horrifying future.

After a violent encounter that leaves four Mexican soldiers dead, Texas Ranger Hackberry Holland escapes the country in possession of a stolen artifact, earning the ire of a bloodthirsty Austrian arms dealer who then places his son, Ishmael, squarely in the crosshairs of a plot to recapture his prize, believed to be the mythic cup of Christ. Along the way, we meet three extraordinary women, each of whom will aid Hackberry in his quest to reconcile with Ishmael, vanquish their enemies, and return the Grail to its rightful place.

In 1959, Nat Collier moves with her husband, Paul, and their two young daughters to Idaho Falls, a remote military town. An Army Specialist, Paul is stationed there to help oversee one of the country’s first nuclear reactors --- an assignment that seems full of opportunity. Then, on his rounds, Paul discovers that the reactor is compromised, placing his family and the entire community in danger. Worse, his superiors set out to cover up the problem rather than fix it. Paul can’t bring himself to tell Nat the truth, but his lies only widen a growing gulf between them.

THE DRESSMAKER'S WAR is the story of Ada Vaughan, a brilliant English seamstress, taken prisoner in Germany during World War II. Stanislaus von Lieben, a Hungarian aristocrat, sweeps Ada off her feet and brings her to Paris. But when war breaks out and Stanislaus vanishes, Ada is abandoned and alone, trapped on an increasingly dangerous continent.

The pieces in SHAME AND WONDER are born of a vast, abiding curiosity, one that has led David Searcy into some strange and beautiful territory, where old Uncle Scrooge comic books reveal profound truths and the vastness of space becomes an expression of pure love. Whether ruminating on an old El Camino pickup truck, those magical prizes lurking in the cereal boxes of our youth, or a lurid online ad for “Sexy Girls Near Dallas,” Searcy brings his unique blend of affection and suspicion to the everyday wonders that surround and seduce us.

This exquisitely imagined novel opens as astronomer William Herschel rescues his sister Caroline from a life of drudgery in Germany and brings her to England and a world of music making and stargazing. William is generous, wise and charismatic, an obsessive genius whom Caroline adores and serves with the fervency of a beloved wife. When William suddenly announces that he will be married, Lina watches her world collapse.

Scott and his wife, Elise, have come to the Hamptons to be with Elise’s terminally ill father. Every night at precisely 11, the lights in their neighbor's bedroom turn off. There's something about that light that Scott can't let go of. So one day he breaks in --- and feels a jolt of excitement he hasn't felt in a long time. Soon he enlists his wife as a partner in crime. Their one simple transgression quickly sends husband and wife down a deliriously wicked spiral of bad decisions, infidelities, escalating violence and absolutely shocking revelations.

Adrift in Cambodia and eager to side-step a life of quiet desperation as a small-town teacher, 28-year-old Englishman Robert Grieve decides to go missing. As he crosses the border from Thailand, he tests the threshold of a new future. And on that first night, a small windfall precipitates a chain of events --- involving a bag of “jinxed” money, a suave American, a trunk full of heroin, a hustler taxi driver, and a rich doctor’s daughter --- that changes Robert’s life forever.

At the age of 48, Cicero is in exile, his great power sacrificed on the altar of his principles. By promising to support his political enemy, Caesar, he is granted return to Rome. There, he fights his way back to prominence. DICTATOR encompasses some of the most epic events in ancient history --- the dissolution of the Roman Republic, the murder of Pompey, the assassination of Julius Caesar. But the central problem it presents is a timeless one: how to keep political freedom unsullied by personal ambition.