Stephen King: Different Seasons

"Is horror all you write?" is the second most frequent question Stephen King encounters,* he tells us in the Afterword to this superlative quartet of novels. Although he is by now a world-class grand master of the horrific, he resists entombment in that genre. That he can transcend horror is proved triumphantly in these four works. At the same time, nobody in search of the utterly distinctive King brand of driving narrative, graphically rendered scene and character, and stamp-on-the-clinging-fingers cliffhanger plot will go away unsatisfied. Consider the four:

Hope Springs Eternal

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption--the most satisfying tale of unjust imprisonment and offbeat escape since The Count of Monte Cristo.