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Night Shift (Night Shift #1-20)
by
Stephen King (Goodreads Author),
John D. MacDonald
Never trust your heart to the New York Times bestselling master of suspense, Stephen King. Especially with an anthology that features the classic stories "Children of the Corn," "The Lawnmower Man," "Graveyard Shift," "The Mangler," and "Sometimes They Come Back"-which were all made into hit horror films.
"Unbearable suspense." (Dallas Morning News)
From the depths of darkne ...more
"Unbearable suspense." (Dallas Morning News)
From the depths of darkne ...more
Paperback, 409 pages
Published
April 1979
by New English Library
(first published February 1978)
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(showing 1-30 of 3,000)
What I learned from Night Shift:
It ain't easy to quit smoking.
That I know what you need.
That I am the doorway.
That he walks behind the rows.
That sometimes they come back.
It ain't over in 'Salem's Lot.
Don't drink bad beer.
Get off your ass and mow your own lawn, goddammit.
It ain't easy to quit smoking.
That I know what you need.
That I am the doorway.
That he walks behind the rows.
That sometimes they come back.
It ain't over in 'Salem's Lot.
Don't drink bad beer.
Get off your ass and mow your own lawn, goddammit.
Also posted at my blog: https://killerscorpion.wordpress.com/...
I find it really difficult to review short stories, especially anthologies. Night Shift is a collection of King's short stories, and if I'm not mistaken, this is a collection of the first short stories he wrote in his early years of writing. The most shocking thing you have to know is that the writing is not outdated. That's the thing about King, I've read his first book Carrie and the writing of it still felt like he wrote it mon ...more
I find it really difficult to review short stories, especially anthologies. Night Shift is a collection of King's short stories, and if I'm not mistaken, this is a collection of the first short stories he wrote in his early years of writing. The most shocking thing you have to know is that the writing is not outdated. That's the thing about King, I've read his first book Carrie and the writing of it still felt like he wrote it mon ...more
Note to self: do not read ANYTHING written by Stephen King after dark. Nothing. Not even if it happens to be comedy, or non-fiction, or freaking poetry. Haven’t you been traumatized enough? You can’t see a clown without pissing yourself! Not that it’s hard to scare me though. I’m the kind of girl that needs to have every light on when she goes downstairs to grab a glass of water, one of those people who knows something’s right behind ready to grab me if I don't reach the second floor as fast as
...more
and 
, so please check the expiration date of everything you eat. 
Many readers consider this book to be one of Stephen King's most popular short story collections, and I can't disagree with that opinion ... mostly because it's only the second anthology by King I have read so far. Many original horror stories are included in this collection, with most of them having been adapted into classic horror movies like "Children of the Corn", "Graveyard Shift" or "The Mangler". In its entirety, however, I consider "Night Shift" to be a rather weak collection of short st
...more
Aug 30, 2016
Fabian
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
REAL hardcore S. King fans
These are short stories (not novellas) and serve as delicious intros to popular King mythologies (for a staggering example see [or better yet, don't {with the exception of "Trucks" a.k.a. "Maximum Overdrive" for B-entertainment and "Children of the Corn" with its quaint moments of childlike chills}] all the movies made from like eight of these tales.) Here, King is at his most bizarre, most morbid. Most of his part-time heroes and (just a few) heroines, end up dead or suffering the loss of a chi
...more
Apr 08, 2015
Edward Lorn
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
52-in-52-2014,
best-of-stephen-king
First read this collection when I was... twenty, I think. Not sure. Does it matter? Probably not. Three things to mention before hitting you with my one sentence reviews: I forgot how much of King's early work tied into these stories, and how much I enjoyed his non-horror outings. Truth be told, I probably didn't like the more literary stories that I read once upon a when because I was a tried and true idiot in those days (I'm still an idiot, but my wife turned me into a functioning idiot, and I
...more
Mr. Stephen King, you started scaring me when I was just a teen, then you go and try to do it again when I’m older, and often none-the-wiser. The best part: you can still do it. Not all of the 20 stories in Night Shift (his first short story collection) are terribly frightening. Some are not meant to be, and some just made me snicker. A few of them are simply fantastic. I could practically reread those right this second. Following is my short take each:
Jersalem’s Lot - The best part: Fans get a ...more
Jersalem’s Lot - The best part: Fans get a ...more
Nov 30, 2015
Nandakishore Varma
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
horror
Usually short-story collections, especially by the same author, always tend to garner a three from me: because they are almost always a mix of the good, the bad and the indifferent, and follows the bell-shaped curve of the normal distribution. But not this one. These collection of early stories from King is filled with the excellent, the very good, the good... and a few mildly good. The distribution skewed heavily in the direction of the terrific.
It's been a long time, but many of the stories li ...more
It's been a long time, but many of the stories li ...more
Sep 14, 2011
Trudi
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
favorites,
short-stories,
classics,
stephen-king,
cover-lust,
scary-as-hell,
re-reads,
2011,
my-desert-island,
classics-horror,
epic-creep,
horror
Make you pee your pants scary!
In his introduction to Skeleton Crew, Stephen King writes: “a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair” whereas the short story “is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.” My literary proclivities definitely lean towards those long affairs. I don’t read a lot of short stories nor am I a fan of the format. At least give me a novella! Stephen King is one of only a handful of authors who can make me a believer in the beauty and ...more
In his introduction to Skeleton Crew, Stephen King writes: “a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair” whereas the short story “is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.” My literary proclivities definitely lean towards those long affairs. I don’t read a lot of short stories nor am I a fan of the format. At least give me a novella! Stephen King is one of only a handful of authors who can make me a believer in the beauty and ...more
Jan 01, 2014
Stefan Yates
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
stephen-king
Overall – I really liked the first story, but after that the stories really seemed to taper off quite a bit until I got to Battleground. After that one, my interested was piqued and the book continued at a high level through The Ledge and on to the end with a few exceptions here and there raising my overall rating from a 3 to a 4.
Jerusalem’s Lot – The first story is an “historical” account of the events that take place when a man and his faithful servant take residence in his ancestral home and ...more
Jerusalem’s Lot – The first story is an “historical” account of the events that take place when a man and his faithful servant take residence in his ancestral home and ...more
6.0 stars. On my list of "All Time Favorite" books and second only to Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman as my favorite short story collection of all time. All of the stories are excellent and it is hard to pick favorites in this collection but I would say "Boogeyman", "Strawberry Spring", "Children of the Corn" and "Jerusalem's Lot" are definitely highlights. Highest Possible Recommendation!!!
Audiobook - Narrated by John Glover - Good narration.
John Glover did a really good job with these stories. Jerusalem's Lot, which I didn't really enjoy when I read it, came to life with Glover.
The only slight criticism I have is that the female characters voices in Night Surf were annoying and Timmy's voice in Grey Matter was a little too high-pitched and grating.
Also, I found the background music was too loud at times.
***
Ebook:
I don't generally like short stories, especially when it's Stephen ...more
L'orrore analizzato nelle sue differenti sfaccettature, non per forza in ambito sovrannaturale.
King firma la sua migliore raccolta di racconti; tali vette -almeno in ambito dei meri racconti- non saranno più raggiunte.
Risaltano subito all'occhio "io sono la porta" e "Jerusalem's lot", due racconti che omaggiano palesemente l'autore di Providence, uno dei punti fermi del nostro King.
Se ci spostiamo sui virtuosismi narrativi, citerei immediatamente "il cornicione" e "il babau".
Il primo racconto è ...more
King firma la sua migliore raccolta di racconti; tali vette -almeno in ambito dei meri racconti- non saranno più raggiunte.
Risaltano subito all'occhio "io sono la porta" e "Jerusalem's lot", due racconti che omaggiano palesemente l'autore di Providence, uno dei punti fermi del nostro King.
Se ci spostiamo sui virtuosismi narrativi, citerei immediatamente "il cornicione" e "il babau".
Il primo racconto è ...more
This might sound a little strange but I think that this collection is a work of art. I'd put this right up alongside Chekhov and Poe.
If you ever wondered why people make such a big deal out of Stephen King, I think his talents are fully on display here.
King has a great ability in these stories to crunch a great deal of backstory and exposition in a small amount of page space and still make it seem natural. In certain paragraphs he'll stealthily segue four or five times without me even noticing ...more
If you ever wondered why people make such a big deal out of Stephen King, I think his talents are fully on display here.
King has a great ability in these stories to crunch a great deal of backstory and exposition in a small amount of page space and still make it seem natural. In certain paragraphs he'll stealthily segue four or five times without me even noticing ...more
There are a few four-star stories in here, but overall they did not engage me as much as his other work has. My favorite was probably ”Children of the Corn.” I also very much enjoyed the foreword. King has always had a certain knack for those. As he often does he advocates the idea that story is more important for him than other aspects of writing. But when reading the stories I did not get the sense that story was central in almost any of them. Rather I got the sense of a writer with more than
...more
Night Shift is perhaps the essential short horror story collection. While I was reading this for the third or fourth time, a friend commented that this is also a terrific example of King's writing before he bacame a household name. And I agree. These stories are gory, frightening, and raw. Jerusalem's Lot, one of my least favorite of the stories included here, actually floored me this time around. The same can be said for One for the Road - the other 'Salem's Lot related story. King's talents ar
...more
Jul 08, 2015
Franco Santos
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
stephen-king
Este libro es la mejor recopilación de relatos de King, a mi parecer. Cada uno muestra una clase y una profundidad soberbia.
Algunas historias me hicieron un nudo en el estomago, y otras me congelaron los huesos del terror. Tengo la sensación de que el autor le dio una atención más que especial a cada cuento.
Basta, S.A. y El Último Peldaño de la Escalera son mis favoritos. De los mejores trabajos de King.
Si buscan una buena novela que les haga sentir desde un miedo desesperante y asfixiante a ...more
Algunas historias me hicieron un nudo en el estomago, y otras me congelaron los huesos del terror. Tengo la sensación de que el autor le dio una atención más que especial a cada cuento.
Basta, S.A. y El Último Peldaño de la Escalera son mis favoritos. De los mejores trabajos de King.
Si buscan una buena novela que les haga sentir desde un miedo desesperante y asfixiante a ...more
Sure, not every story is perfect, but as a collective whole this collection kicks it.
Almost all the stories are unique, and of course many of them have made their way to the screen. He apparently was still highly in his Salem's Lot world as he put in not one, but two, stories about the town here. One was called Jerusalem's Lot, which is a big treat for Salem's Lot fans especially. Creepy and decent, told through letters, it's a bit slow and the writing style used is old-fashioned to try and dup ...more
i don't know how i never read this before; i've loved stephen king my whole life, i feel like an idiot! it's like i just found out that there was an old testament to the bible... or something, you know, less offensive... anyway, yeah, these stories are amazing! no wonder they made (shitty) movies out of virtually every single one of them. and it's really weird to read this and think that this is the same guy who went on to write all those 40,000 page-long books!? when all these stories are so sh
...more
Sep 14, 2016
Reanna
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
stephen-king,
2016-reads
Overall an excellent collection here, loved more than I apparently did as a teenager. :)
It's really difficult to rate a book of short stories, some in this collection were poor and a few were amazing, in the end I've bottled it and averaged out the ratings to give it 3 stars. You can tell this is early work by Stephen King, very rough around the edges but the ideas of a genius are there. It would be interesting if Stephen King was to rewrite these stories now, how much better would they be?
The best of the collection was "The man who loved flowers" it is one of the shortest, but he ...more
The best of the collection was "The man who loved flowers" it is one of the shortest, but he ...more
May 02, 2009
Bobby Bermea
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
the-blood-is-the-life,
on-my-shelf
I had to do a quick review of a King book I liked because I did one of a book of his I didn't like and that was all I had on the guy. That wasn't right because truth be told he's one of my very favorite writers. I don't know if he would take this as a compliment but my favorite stories by King are generally short stories. Night Shift was his first collection and one of the first books I ever read by him. Every story doesn't hit but the ones that do hit hard. And only Stephen King can write a sto
...more
En este libro hay un cuento para todos los gustos, debo decir que es lo mejor que leí de King hasta el momento.
Cada historia tiene un final sublime y que te deja dándole vueltas durante un largo rato.
Hay un par de cuentos que retoman lo sucedido en el libro Salem's Lot (1991), me encantó este detalle ya que complementa un poco más el final del pueblo y los vampiros.
“Let's talk, you and I. Let's talk about fear.”
La pequeña introducción que realiza King en forma de monólogo me encantó. Su forma ...more
Cada historia tiene un final sublime y que te deja dándole vueltas durante un largo rato.
Hay un par de cuentos que retoman lo sucedido en el libro Salem's Lot (1991), me encantó este detalle ya que complementa un poco más el final del pueblo y los vampiros.
“Let's talk, you and I. Let's talk about fear.”
La pequeña introducción que realiza King en forma de monólogo me encantó. Su forma ...more
Aunque algunos relatos no me han parecido gran cosa en ninguno de ellos he pensado tras terminarlo que ha sido una pérdida de tiempo haber leído ese relato, ninguno de todos ellos me ha desagradado; por eso, aunque no entra en mi lista de favoritos, creo que sí se merece las cinco estrellas de valoración. Unos por otros hacen una buena experiencia de lectura, y creo que a Stephen King se le dan muy bien los relatos, creo que debería de animarse a publicarlos más frecuentemente.
Si te apetece leer ...more
Si te apetece leer ...more
Nov 26, 2015
Kevin Cambronero
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
terror,
stephen-king
¡Qué buen libro!
Muchos dicen que ésta es la mejor recopilación de relatos de Stephen King; yo no puedo opinar porque es la única que he leído, pero realmente es buenísima. King es un verdadero maestro.
El coco, El hombre de la cortadora de césped, Basta S.A, Sé lo que necesitas y Los chicos del maíz fueron mis favoritos, increíblemente buenos.
Los demás fueron sólo buenos; pero ninguno malo, exceptuando Marejada nocturna, que fue el único que realmente no me gustó. La cornisa provocó que me sudara ...more
Muchos dicen que ésta es la mejor recopilación de relatos de Stephen King; yo no puedo opinar porque es la única que he leído, pero realmente es buenísima. King es un verdadero maestro.
El coco, El hombre de la cortadora de césped, Basta S.A, Sé lo que necesitas y Los chicos del maíz fueron mis favoritos, increíblemente buenos.
Los demás fueron sólo buenos; pero ninguno malo, exceptuando Marejada nocturna, que fue el único que realmente no me gustó. La cornisa provocó que me sudara ...more
Sep 20, 2015
Aurora Dimitre
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
eesh,
september-2015
My favorite thing about this collection is just how weird it is. I mean, Stephen King has the capacity to be weird, and we all knew that - but this series in general is just so weird. Almost... Goosebump-y, in a way. You know, where in the end you find out that the gorilla lawn ornament is alive, too.
It's hard for me to pick a favorite out of these ones, though I have a huge soft spot for stories such as The Mangler, and The Lawnmower Man, and Quitter's, Inc, but really, I enjoy them all. T ...more
It's hard for me to pick a favorite out of these ones, though I have a huge soft spot for stories such as The Mangler, and The Lawnmower Man, and Quitter's, Inc, but really, I enjoy them all. T ...more
A great book of lots of short stories. Almost every one of them was excellent!
Aug 31, 2015
Ken McKinley
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
horror,
own-kindle
Night Shift is the first short story collection from Stephen King and it is quite simply the finest group of short stories that I've ever read. While not all of them are 5 star reads, as a whole the entire compilation is amazing. This is King at his utmost finest.
Here is my breakdown of each story -
Jerusalem's Lot - A short story that pre-dates the happenings in 'Salem's Lot. The story takes place in 1850 and is written in epistolary form where the main character, Charles Boone inherits an old ...more
Here is my breakdown of each story -
Jerusalem's Lot - A short story that pre-dates the happenings in 'Salem's Lot. The story takes place in 1850 and is written in epistolary form where the main character, Charles Boone inherits an old ...more
Taking over from the aging James Michener, Stephen King has become master of the novel/doorstop. Not only do his hefty tomes make for very good reading they also come in handy as cudgels against the occasional burglar.
However, what he does better than anyone, in my opinion, are short stories. For this he's the Babe Ruth of writing(many of us forget his .342 lifetime batting average and just concentrate on his homers...Ruth I mean. Not King.)
Somehow King can place a reader right on the doorstep o ...more
However, what he does better than anyone, in my opinion, are short stories. For this he's the Babe Ruth of writing(many of us forget his .342 lifetime batting average and just concentrate on his homers...Ruth I mean. Not King.)
Somehow King can place a reader right on the doorstep o ...more
For me, this is without a doubt Stephen King at his best. I said in my The Dark Half review that I think Stephen King does best when working in the short story form, and I firmly stand by this assertion. Here, he must focus. Irrelevant detail, as pleasant as it can be to read in King's hands, is justly considered extraneous and he must concentrate in delivering heavy, solid punches to the gut. Since most of this stuff is classifiable as horror, too, I must iterate a point I've always made about
...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| this is the novel i selected for my book assignment | 1 | 13 | Mar 07, 2016 07:44AM | |
| Short stories you'd like to see expanded? | 6 | 50 | Feb 22, 2016 12:33PM | |
| What's The Name o...: Stephen King ( short story) maybe about vampires [s] | 4 | 59 | Jul 17, 2014 07:31PM | |
| Stephen King Fans: The Lawnmower Man-NS | 46 | 294 | Jan 24, 2014 08:42PM | |
| The Stories Within (Discussion) | 27 | 82 | Nov 27, 2013 11:54AM | |
| What's The Name o...: SOLVED. Medical or Sci-Fi Paperback with a hand growing eyes on it [s] | 7 | 198 | Nov 14, 2013 06:53AM |
Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, M
...more
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“The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real. I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.”
—
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“You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is also judging you.”
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