Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales

This Short Story collection is King's best work in recent years. Unlike Nightmares and Dreamscapes it only has 14 stories, but most are high quality stories that are fascinating for how easy the stories flow. I have this novel twice in softcover and once in hardcover. Here is a story-by-story breakdown.# 1 - Autopsy Room Four - A man is paralyzed after getting bitten by a rare snake on a golf course. Everyone thinks he is dead, which is the reason he is in an autopsy room. This story has the uncomfortable feeling that you would also get from being buried alive. King is a master at getting his readers to feel what his main characters feel. This is a top-notch story and a great way to start out the book. Story Grade - A+# 2 - The Man In The Black Suit - Imagine meeting the devil in a very real-world setting. This is basically what this story is in a nutshell. It comes off much better than it sounds. King won an award for best short fiction for this story and it is well deserved. Story Grade - A+# 3 - All That You Love Will Be Carried Away - An unsettling story about a traveling salesman on the verge of committing suicide. This is a story that makes you wonder if we all have a preset destiny or if we can change the way our lives go. An interesting story, not the best but certainly not among the worst either. Story Grade - B# 4 - The Death Of Jack Hamilton - This story is based on the true story of the death of a member of John Dillinger's first gang. Normally I don't go for western, or outlaw stories, but King drew me in with this one. It was a great story and I was glad to read it. King does a great job of telling the story from the first-person point of view. Story Grade - A# 5 - In The Deathroom - An unusual King story that has a happy ending. Still throughout much of the story it doesn't seem like it will go that way. A former reporter for the New York Times is captured by a South American government. The reporter is held in what is known as "The Deathroom" where he is repeatedly interrogated about a Communist insurgancy that he has been supporting. Despite his captor's claim that he will be set free if he reveals all, the ex-reporter knows that is not in the plans. He stays calm despite the tortures he faces and strives to fight back and survive his terrible ordeal. Again King makes you feel like the lead character feels. He makes the situation relatable and horrifying. Story Grade - A+# 6 - The Little Sisters Of Eluria - This is a Dark Towers-related story. I do not follow that series so I never read this story. Dark Towers is too fantasy based for my taste so most of the stories related to that series I tend to not read. I'll skip the story grade because I did not read this story so it would be wrong to grade it.# 7 - Everything's Eventual - This story is one of King's best ever in my opinion. It's about a boy who has been bullied, until he realizes his powers and fights back against the bullies. Unlike Carrie or Firestarter, this is a boy with superpowers. The lead character is a bit of a nerd, but he is easy to feel sorry for. Recruited by the government he sets about using his powers to writer letters or emails to people causing them to committ suicide. For this work he is given a free house, a car, almost anything he wants by way of the cleaners that come around once a week. He does not contact them in person but leaves messages on the fridge for what he wants, from food to an copied painting by Rembrant, to an autographed picture of Nichole Kidman. He also gets cd's & movies before they are released to the general public. Dinky (the main character) also gets paid, a whopping sum of $70 a week and uses the money for trips to McDonalds, the movies, gas money etc. It's not about the cash though, it's about the benefits. One thing is that Dinky must begin the week broke and end the week broke. You might wonder why he has to shred the money or toss the change down a sewer drain. But there are good reasons for everything. The story ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. I would like to read a sequel to this one day. Story Grade - A+# 8 - LT's Theory Of Pets - A fascinating story about the breakup of a marriage and how similar the relationships between dogs and cats are to a married couple. The main character (LT) is pretty lighthearted throughout much of the story, but throws a surprise towards the end. This story takes you on an emotional roller-coaster and is the kind of story to be told around a campfire. Like Everything's Eventual, this story is one of King's best works ever. Stroy Grade - A+# 9 - The Road Virus Heads North - This story is basically another inspired by a painting King has. Those paintings that seem to move before your very eyes. Unlike those drawings/paintings, this one haunts the author who bought it at a yardsale. After awhile he tries to get rid of the painting only to have it come back and haunt him and the driver of the car in the painting follows the author's trail. Richard Kinnell (the writer) hears of the brutal death of the woman who sold the painting to him. The story basically says that we are all destined to our own fate. Story Grade - A# 10 - Lunch At The Gotham Cafe - This story is about a couple getting a divorce and how much of the ordeal is a waking nightmare. As the couple argue over petty things, the maitre d is going crazy and stabs the wife's lawyer. Most of the crowd escapes unharmed, but the couple is faced with having to fight off a crazed maitre d in the kitchen. This is a story that is twisted, but you can imagine something like this happening. Another great story in this collection! Story Grade - A+# 11 - That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French - Deja Vu. A woman traveling with her husband experiences a repeat of events from flying on an airplane (that crashes and blows up) to traveling in a limo to the airplane. This story shows how repeating events could be very tiring, but still a good story nonetheless. Story Grade - B# 12 - 1408 - This is a haunted hotel room story King started in his novel On Writing. It was basically to show fans how to writer a story that's been told a thousand times but do so in a way where it comes off as new & original. You almost can feel that this story takes place in one of the rooms of the Overlook hotel (The Shining). Anything more would spoil the story. Story Grade - A+# 13 - Riding The Bullet - Originally it was an online book. A simple tale of a character facing death. He is hitchhiking to visit his mother who just suffered a massive stroke. He falls asleep in a cemetary, unknown to him that the headstone he sleeps near is the next driver who will pick him up. Alan Parker (the main character) is forced to face the death of his mother. If he doesn't choose her to die it will be Alan himself who dies. A great story that reminds us that we are not immune to death and neither are our loved ones. Much much better than that pathetic movie adaptation in 2004. Story Grade - A+# 14 - Luckey Quarter - A woman is tipped a lucky quarter from a man in a gambling hotel. She envisions herself gambling the quarter and winning over and over again. The woman is the mother of two children, her teenage daughter and her sickly young son. She is poor and when the fantasy ends she gives the quarter to her son who was visiting her at work and he precedes to win when he gambles it. Just like her fantasy he wins over and over again. The woman is left to say to herself "Lucky me, lucky me"One thing I didn't get about the story was that King made it sound as if the boy was very young, so what is he doing gambling? A nice positive story, which is rare for King. Not one of the best and not one of the worst. Story Grade - BI have this book twice in softcover and once in hardcover. I highly recommend it. One of King's best works ever!

In the near thirty years that Stephen King has been writing, he has undoubtedly proven that he is a writer of excellence. He has honed his craft from the "horror" genre into just being a darned good story teller. And even when his stories ultimately fail (such as in "Cujo"), one can't deny his power as the writer of the century (20th). As much as I admire King, though, I wish he hadn't totally abandoned what he did best: out and out scary tales that made you shudder when you read them--the vampires amid the seeminly normal "Salem's Lot"; the bond of childhood friendship and the impending horrors of "It,"; the doomed people greedily seeking their gluttonous fantasies in "Needful Things,"; the evil car in "Christine,"; the victimized "Carrie"; and all of his other truly scary stories. While I have enjoyed his short stories, most notably in "Skeleton Crew" and "Night Shift," I never fully enjoyed "Nightmares and Dreamscapes," nor this current collection of fourteen "dark" tales. It seemed as though King was insistent on being a literary force, one who would be taken seriously as something other than a "horror" writer. I feel that King's status as a horror writer is what has made him the force he is. So with that in mind, let me say that I only read thirteen of the stories, as I never could get into the Dark Tower series. The stories I read have a varying mixture of plot and character studies, and King continues to reign supreme with some of the characters he gives us in this collection. The narrator in "L.T.'s Theory on Pets" is a brilliant narrative, that is both funny and eerie. If L.T.'s wife was really killed by the Axe Man, where is her body and who is the Axeman? All of the stories have something of merit, but not all of them were truly scary or unnerving. "The Road Virus Goes North" is a spooky tale, but is reminiscent of the Night Gallery episode in which Roddy McDowall sees his fate change on the picture. That still doesn't negate the terror in this story as the writer knows his fate is coming after him. It's one of the best in the book. "Riding the Bullet" is unsettling in that it really doesn't explain itself truly. The hero's encounter with the dead driver is quite frightening, but its denouement offes little other than that the boy's guilt over the death of his mother haunts him; what IF he had stayed with the crotch-grabbing, pee-smelling old man? One of my favorites is "This Feeling, the One You Can Only Say is French". This deja vu thriller works on several levels, and its conclusion is haunting, it's one of his best I think in years. "Lunch at the Gotham" is out and out gory slapstick, that gives us a crazed maitre'd, with King's underlying theme that no one really pays attention to what goes on around them. And do we ever really know why the wife left her husband? "Luckey Quarter" (and why is the luckey mispelled?) is a hopeful story that shows a mother's love and faith in her children---but scary? Dark? Not really. The opener "Autopsy Room Four" is a blatant rip off of an old Twilight Zone episode, which King readily admits. His method of discovering the cataleptic corpse is however very up to date, sexually oriented, I'm sure, to please our current marketplace of readers. "1408" is a wipeout in my opinion. We get this guy held by a foreign country for his contributions to a drug lord; he gets out, and makes it back, so what?This book also has several significant subplots involving smoking; I wonder if King has some kind of hidden agenda in this one?At any rate, King's fans won't be totally disappointed in this collection. He knows how to write; I just wish he would continue to let us see how much he knows how to scare!!RECOMMENDED

I started out reading to my girls at an early age and they love it and excelled in school. They both received full college scholarships.

I'm a big King fan - it is a fun read.

Lovely hardback, great condition, and prompt service. All of which only added to the enjoyment of the stories inside.

Ottimo acquisto ad un buon prezzo

The media could not be loaded.  I loved the printing, loved the quality of the book came in just fine 8 days, very offbeat nice book. I would recommend to everyone who love reading books

Llego en muy bien estado, a tiempo.Y me encanta, es un tamaño perfecto para poder cargarlo en tu bolsa o de viaje.