Full Dark, No Stars

"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.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King, four “disturbing, fascinating” (The Washington Post) novellas—including the story “1922,” a Netflix original film—that explore the dark side of human nature.

“The pages practically turn themselves” (USA TODAY) in Full Dark, No Stars, an unforgettable collection centered around the theme of retribution.

In “1922,” a violence awakens inside a man when his wife proposes selling off the family homestead, setting in motion a grisly train of murder and madness.

In “Big Driver”, a mystery writer is brutally assaulted by a stranger along a Massachusetts back road and plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself.

In “Fair Extension,” making a deal with the devil not only saves a man from terminal illness but also provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment.

In “A Good Marriage,” the trust forged by more than twenty years of matrimony is irrevocably shattered when a woman makes a chance discovery leading to the horrifying implications of just who her husband really is.

Like Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight, which generated such enduring hit films as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, King’s Full Dark, No Stars is a “page-turner” (The New York Times) “as gripping as his epic novels” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), and “an extraordinary collection, thrillingly merciless, and a career high point” (The Telegraph, UK).