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The Bazaar of Bad Dreams: Stories, by Stephen King
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Now in a mass-market paperback premium edition—the instant #1 New York Times bestseller! Stephen King delivers an “outstanding” (USA TODAY) collection of stories, featuring revelatory autobiographical comments on when, why, and how he came to write (or rewrite) each story.
“I’ve made some things for you, Constant Reader. …Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth.”
Since Nightshift, published thirty-five years ago, Stephen King has dazzled an entire generation of readers with his genius as a prominent writer of short fiction. Now in his latest collection, he once again assembles a generous array of unforgettable, tantalizing tales—including those that, until recently, have never been published in a book (such as the story “Cookie Jar,” which is exclusive to this edition). There are thrilling connections between these works—themes of mortality, the afterlife, guilt, and what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past. Magnificent, eerie, and utterly compelling, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams is one of Stephen King’s finest gifts to readers everywhere—a master storyteller at his very best.
- Sales Rank: #3468 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-11-03
- Released on: 2015-11-03
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
“Renowned author King’s impressive latest collection wraps 20 stories and poems in fascinating commentary…the stories themselves are meditations on mortality, destiny, and regret, all of which showcase King’s talent for exploring the human condition…this introspective collection, like many of King’s most powerful works, draws on the deepest emotions: love, grief, fear and hope.” (Publishers Weekly, STARRED review)
"A gathering of short stories by an ascended master of the form... This collection speaks to King's considerable abilities as a writer of genre fiction who manages to expand and improve the genre as he works; certainly no one has invested ordinary reality and ordinary objects with as much creepiness as King... Best of all, lifting the curtain, King prefaces the stories with notes about how they came about. Those notes alone make this a must for aspiring writers." (Kirkus)
"To the reader's delight, King provides a backstory for each tale, enticing the reader with a memory or scenario that prompted that particular selection's birth... The stories collected here are riveting and sometimes haunting, as is the author's style. Surprise endings abound. King is in a class all by himself. Be prepared to read voraciously." (Library Journal, starred review)
“BAD DREAMS packs plenty of bite into the 20 stories found here… a welcome dose of horror from the modern master. A large helping, too: Dreams weighs in at 495 pages, every one of which whips by as you plunge into one jolting tale after another… in the space of just a few pages, King can leave your nerves thoroughly jangled. As always, King conjures nightmares you don’t necessarily want to wake up from.” (Preston Jones, The Fort Worth Star Telegram)
“[King]has always had a wicked (in more ways than one) sense of humor, too, and it'soften on display along with the scary stuff in his new short story collection, THE BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS…One of the bonuses of Bazaar is that each story is preceded by a note from the author about its genesis… If you're looking for King's paranormal horror side, though, Bazaar has plenty to satisfy you…And if you want King in full funny tall-tale mode, head for Drunken Fireworks.It's the hilarious story of how its narrator, a Maine native named Alden who lives with his mother in a modest cabin on the ‘town side’ of Abenaki Lake,gets into an ever-escalating Fourth of July arms race with a rich guy on the other shore who's rumored to be ‘connected,’ if you know what I mean. One lesson: Never buy a firework called Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind.” (Collette Bancroft, The Tampa Bay Times)
“The best stories in THE BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS are the ones that read like they meant something to King... A Death, which bears the easy, plaintive prose of Kent Haruf, follows a sheriff preparing to go through with the hanging of a man who may have been falsely convicted of murder. Obits channels the snark and cynicism of contemporary culture as its hero, a writer of celebrity death notices for a Gawker-like website, discovers he can kill people by writing their obituaries while they’re still alive. Summer Thunder, the touching post-apocalyptic story that concludes the book, ends on a note of lovely melancholy. Death may be inevitable, King says. But to fret about it or dwell on it is a waste of time when life, even at its most difficult, can bear so many rewards.” (Rene Rodriguez, The Miami Herald)
“Outstanding…King’s usual homespun style and storytelling swerves are fully evident, yet what’s really neat about Bad Dreams is the scribe’s introductions to each piece. Like little throwbacks to his 2000 manual/memoir On Writing,King tosses out bits of trivia and inspiration for each of his short form treats. A series of 150-mile drives in college led to Mile 81 and the most homicidal car since Christine. And a double whammy of trips to Applebee’s plus observing a road-rage incident in real time sparked his impressive imagination to create Batman and Robin Have an Altercation,an excellent piece pitting a father-and-son dynamic duo against Alzheimer’s and a strapping Texan. Short stories have a famous place in the King oeuvre, with the likes of The Body and RitaHayworth and Shawshank Redemption finding second lives on the big screen as Stand By Me and Shawshank Redemption. So it’s interesting to read how King likens himself to a midnight street vendor with these mini-tales and confesses they have given him ‘a soul-deep fear thatI will be unable to bridge the gap between a great idea and the realization ofthat idea’s potential.’ Like all the greats, though, his ability to grip thereader’s mind, body and soul with his prose makes it all look easy.” (Brian Truitt, USA Today)
“A triumph…Stephen King’s shorter works have inspired readers, writers, filmmakers and other artists for more than 40 years. His newest short story collection, THE BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS, continues his tradition of compulsively readable short stories, novellas and narrative poems that will thrill fans looking for scares, surprise critics that write him off as a ‘genre’ author and inform artists about his personal creative process…[the] introductions are a fascinating look into the mind of one of the most popular writers in the world, and much like his writers’ manual “On Writing,” he provides readers with concise and insightful observations about the art of the written word…remarkably resonant… The last story of the collection, ‘Summer Thunder,’ takes the reader through the last days of two survivors of a worldwide nuclear holocaust… the last lines of the story are some of the most emotionally powerful sentences Mr. King has ever committed to paper — they will leave readers weepy, uplifted and satisfied…With THE BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS, Stephen King has achieved something rare: a short story collection with no weak spots. From a woman confronted with the limits of empathy and the reality of pain, to a man who sees the names of the doomed written in sand, the pieces play off of one another to create a cohesive reading experience filled with optimism, sadness and a search for answers to life’s unanswerable questions. While these stories may conjure up a few nightmares, they also will delight, inspire and, most importantly, entertain readers willing to make the journey." (Wendeline O. Wright, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
“[King]serves up a potent mix of stories that land in and around the horror genre. Not surprisingly, most are classic King page-turners, but the choicest finds in this bazaar are the stories behind the stories or, more correctly, in front of them. King introduces each story with an explanation about the motivation for writing it. You don't need to be a writer — or a King fan — to find these fascinating.Anyone who's ever wondered about the creative process will find the author's path to each story revelatory…Each story is compelling in its own way,though I'm guessing each reader will have favorites and it's doubtful that any two lists will be the same.” (Cathy Jakicic, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
“King fans are in for another in a long line of treats…THE BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS provides a tasty sampler that, like his other short story collections, showcases the master’s array of talents.” (John Holyoke, Bangor Daily News)
“Stephen King taps economic uncertainty and his own deep well of creativity to create 20 unsettling stories…It may be seven more years before King delivers another collection such as this one. Depending on how ordinary people continue to fare in the face of harsh reality, his topics of concern may shift in the meantime, as may those of his audience. Readers can be thankful, however, that he’s still out there pitching stories with all the craft and guile he can muster.” (Michael Berry, The Portland Press Herald)
“[A] meaty collection with interesting insights into the creative process of a writer who caused many sleepless nights. Well worth keeping on your bedside table for those evenings when, as King puts it:‘... sleep is slow to come and you wonder why the closet door is open, when you know perfectly well that you shut it.’" (Rob Merrill, The Associated Press)
“There are a lot of good stories in this collection: moving,disturbing and in between. ‘Summer Thunder’ imagines a post-apocalyptic world of startling beauty…In ‘Morality,’ a marriage goes south when a wife falls prey to the imprecations of her employer — not sexual, but ethical. The idea is that we are all complicit, fundamentally, in what happens to us, that the stain of sin is a collective one…When King gives himself a little room to move,the effects are not only unnerving but also deeply human, a series of riffs on love and loss.” (David Ulin, The Los Angeles Times)
“In the more harrowing tales of THE BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS, [it’s] the quotidian particulars of 21st century life — Walmart, DUI convictions, road rage, the stony realism of Maine’s rural poor — that haunt us…THE BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS, of course, wouldn’t feel like real Stephen King to some without a closing story from the apocalypse. In the grimly gorgeous‘Summer Thunder,’ another high point in the collection, a man,his stray dog, Gandalf, and a neighbor wait out radiation poisoning at the end of the world. The final line is killer.” (Ethan Gilsdorf, The Boston Globe)
“Shortbut sweet…horror abounds in these collected tales…King confidently inhabitsvaried realms, from the American frontier, where a tale of justice plays out,to a Florida island with deathly secrets. He prefaces each story with anexplanation of its genesis, providing a fascinating glimpse into the mind ofremarkable writer.” (People)
“King’s constant readers will devour this new collection — the author is in rare form, not only talking to the reader directly in each introduction, but in making his characters fully human. Their hopes and their dreams are all on display. King says himself in the opening pages, ‘Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth.’ Indeed.” (Doug Knoop, The Seattle Times)
“King has not lost his ability to keep readers turning the pages late into the night, nor his knack of grounding the supernatural within the most mundane details of American life…this collection of 20 pieces displays a surprisingly wide range…Some of the high points find King in familiar territory…But there are equally successful stories that do not rely on the supernatural…Aptly, the book closes with ‘Summer Thunder,’ an end-of-the-world story, this time caused by our old friend nuclear war. It's a quiet tale, just two friends and a dog out in the country waiting for the radiation to kick in, but there's a particularly moving finish.” (Andy Smith, The Providence Journal)
About the Author
Edgar Award winner for Best Novel), Doctor Sleep, and Under the Dome. His novel 11/22/63—a recent Hulu original television series event—was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller as well as the Best Hardcover Book Award from the International Thriller Writers. He is the recipient of the 2014 National Medal of Arts and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.
Excerpt. � Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams Introduction
I’ve made some things for you, Constant Reader; you see them laid out before you in the moonlight. But before you look at the little handcrafted treasures I have for sale, let’s talk about them for a bit, shall we? It won’t take long. Here, sit down beside me. And do come a little closer. I don’t bite.
Except�.�.�. we’ve known each other for a very long time, and I suspect you know that’s not entirely true.
Is it?
I
You’d be surprised—at least, I think you would be—at how many people ask me why I still write short stories. The reason is pretty simple: writing them makes me happy, because I was built to entertain. I can’t play the guitar very well, and I can’t tap-dance at all, but I can do this. So I do.
I’m a novelist by nature, I will grant you that, and I have a particular liking for the long ones that create an immersive experience for writer and reader, where the fiction has a chance to become a world that’s almost real. When a long book succeeds, the writer and reader are not just having an affair; they are married. When I get a letter from a reader who says he or she was sorry when The Stand or 11/22/63 came to an end, I feel that book has been a success.
But there’s something to be said for a shorter, more intense experience. It can be invigorating, sometimes even shocking, like a waltz with a stranger you will never see again, or a kiss in the dark, or a beautiful curio for sale laid out on a cheap blanket at a street bazaar. And, yes, when my stories are collected, I always feel like a street vendor, one who sells only at midnight. I spread my assortment out, inviting the reader—that’s you—to come and take your pick. But I always add the proper caveat: be careful, my dear, because some of these items are dangerous. They are the ones with bad dreams hidden inside, the ones you can’t stop thinking about when sleep is slow to come and you wonder why the closet door is open, when you know perfectly well that you shut it.
II
If I said I always enjoyed the strict discipline shorter works of fiction impose, I’d be lying. Short stories require a kind of acrobatic skill that takes a lot of tiresome practice. Easy reading is the product of hard writing, some teachers say, and it’s true. Miscues that can be overlooked in a novel become glaringly obvious in a short story. Strict discipline is necessary. The writer has to rein in his impulse to follow certain entrancing side paths and stick to the main route.
I never feel the limitations of my talent so keenly as I do when writing short fiction. I have struggled with feelings of inadequacy, a soul-deep fear that I will be unable to bridge the gap between a great idea and the realization of that idea’s potential. What that comes down to, in plain English, is that the finished product never seems quite as good as the splendid idea that rose from the subconscious one day, along with the excited thought, Ah man! I gotta write this right away!
Sometimes the result is pretty good, though. And every once in awhile, the result is even better than the original concept. I love it when that happens. The real challenge is getting into the damned thing, and I believe that’s why so many would-be writers with great ideas never actually pick up the pen or start tapping away at the keys. All too often, it’s like trying to start a car on a cold day. At first the motor doesn’t even crank, it only groans. But if you keep at it (and if the battery doesn’t die), the engine starts�.�.�. runs rough�.�.�. and then smooths out.
There are stories here that came in a flash of inspiration (“Summer Thunder” was one of those), and had to be written at once, even if it meant interrupting work on a novel. There are others, like “Mile 81,” that have waited their turn patiently for decades. Yet the strict focus needed to create a good short story is always the same. Writing novels is a little like playing baseball, where the game goes on for as long as it needs to, even if that means twenty innings. Writing short stories is more like playing basketball or football: you’re competing against the clock as well as the other team.
When it comes to writing fiction, long or short, the learning curve never ends. I may be a Professional Writer to the IRS when I file my tax return, but in creative terms, I’m still an amateur, still learning my craft. We all are. Every day spent writing is a learning experience, and a battle to do something new. Phoning it in is not allowed. One cannot increase one’s talent—that comes with the package—but it is possible to keep talent from shrinking. At least, I like to think so.
And hey! I still love it.
III
So here are the goods, my dear Constant Reader. Tonight I’m selling a bit of everything—a monster that looks like a car (shades of Christine), a man who can kill you by writing your obituary, an e-reader that accesses parallel worlds, and that all-time favorite, the end of the human race. I like to sell this stuff when the rest of the vendors have long since gone home, when the streets are deserted and a cold rind of moon floats over the canyons of the city. That’s when I like to spread my blanket and lay out my goods.
That’s enough talk. Perhaps you’d like to buy something, now, yes? Everything you see is handcrafted, and while I love each and every item, I’m happy to sell them, because I made them especially for you. Feel free to examine them, but please be careful.
The best of them have teeth.
August 6, 2014
Most helpful customer reviews
100 of 108 people found the following review helpful.
A Great Collection That Matches His Past Short Story Work
By Robert Bolton
In recent years, many devoted readers of Stephen King have made the complaint that his novels have declined in quality. While that might be true, I always reply that his short stories are (and always have been) his best works. This new collection shows that Mr. King has not last his talent at building up terror in readers of the span over forty or fifty pages. Unlike past collections, though, these stories more often reveal the monstrosity within the human soul, rather than any outside ghoul.
In total, there are twenty stories in this collection, with only three or four I have not recognized from prior publication either in magazines or on Amazon Kindle. A few, like "Blockade Billy," even made it into a hardback format. Despite this, however, there are a few of his recent efforts (like "Into the Tall Grass") that have been regrettably omitted. That does not detract from the overall quality of this work.
One of his stories, "Ur" contemplates the possibility of alternate realities in a vein similar to his novel 11/22/63, and also throws in a few allusions to his Dark Tower series, which personally thrilled me. Another story, "Afterlife," features a man who suffers a slow, painful death from cancer, but finds himself in a vicious ouroboro, repeating the mistakes of the past in slightly new ways, but with the same ultimate result. Although Mr. King has delved into Holmesian detective fiction before, his story "Batman and Robin Have an Altercation" unfortunately does not actually involve the masked detective. It does, though, grimly describe the visit of a middle-aged man to his Alzheimer's-stricken father in a nursing home and what that leads to. My personal favorite among these stories, however, is "The Dune," featuring a state supreme court judge whose attorney discovers the secret of the judge's childhood haunt. Surprisingly, Mr. King also includes a few pieces of poetry in this collection. While he has done so in the past, I must admit that I personally prefer his prose.
Some of his other stories reveal Mr. King's age. When I saw the title for his story, "Hermann Wouk Is Still Alive," I wondered to myself if anyone under the age of forty even knows who he was. That is not a bad thing, however, and he also gives tips of the hat to horror writers like H.P. Lovecraft and Arthur Machen who ceased writing long before Mr. King began his career. For those with a love of the horror genre, these are welcome acknowledgements to some of King's most frequent inspirations.
On the whole, this is a great collection by Stephen King. While it is not the best collection he has produced, it presents new and recently published material that meets the demanding standards of his fans. A great way to spend one's evening reading hours.
134 of 150 people found the following review helpful.
Not his best anthology by a long shot.
By James Tepper
It is much easier to write a review of THE BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS than it is to assign it a numerical ranking. This is because several of the short stories in this anthology have already been released, not only in whatever periodicals they originally appeared, but also as Kindle singles, and three of them (MILE 81, UR, and DRUNKEN FIREWORKS) are (arguably, I suppose) among the best of the lot. Another couple of the stories (BLOCKADE BILLY [truly forgettable] and MORALITY,were previously released (2010) in an inexpensive hardcover print and/or other editions, and one, DRUNKEN FIREWORKS, a typically wonderful, straight-up no horror or supernatural rural SK tale was released last year as in audible only format) and another, THE LITTLE GREEN GOD OF AGONY, a great King horror short, was published in a 2011 anthology by several horror writers (A BOOK OF HORRORS). That leaves 13 other entries, two of which were poems. Of the remaining 11 (and I am pretty sure that most of them were also previously published in periodicals and possibly other multi-author anthologies that I have not seen), my favorite was OBITS (that reminded me a lot of, and used the same Maguffin as in KIng's THE WORD PROCESSOR).
If you have never read any of these stories before, then MILE 81, UR, LITTLE GREEN GOD OF AGONY and DRUNKEN FIREWORKS alone are, I am confident to say, worth the price of admission, and this anthology deserves an Amazon rating of 4 or 5. But if you have already read only 2 or 3 of them, as most die hard SK fans like myself have, then the rating drops markedly, based only on what's left after all the winners have been discounted. I have rated this a 3, which, except for BLOCKADE BILLY that I rated as a 2 (my lowest rating for any SK novel, short story, anthology or non-fiction and I have read most of them), which ties for the lowest rating I have given to any review of anything King has published.
I am NOT one of those who say stuff like "Back when he could write..." or "His best days are far behind him." or any horse feces like that. All one has to do is read 11/22/63, JOYLAND, DOCTOR SLEEP, REVIVAL or either of the two BILL HODGES TRILOGY, all published in 2011 or subsequently, to know that King is still one the best writers of fiction around. And, it could even be argued, that he is a better writer now, more polished at his craft and more mature, than he he was as an (alcoholic, coked-up but who cares, it was the 70s and 80s and he already had money and accolades enough for a lifetime) astoundingly successful young writer in his prime, from the mid 1980s through his near-fatal accident in 1999.
And for God's sake, those who rate this anthology poorly (as I guess I sort of do) , but say it's because he is writing for money - that really makes me lol. The guy is worth something like $400 million. If YOU had $400 million, would you want to risk your reputation simply to make another lousy $20 million? Neither would I, and neither, I am sure, would Stephen King.
I think what happened with BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS was, in large part, due to the relatively recent (about 8 years since first introduction) advent of electronic publishing in the form of Kindle singles. Prior to that, if one did not see one of SK's shorts in the original periodical that published it, one had almost no chance to read it (or even know about it) until it was collected into an anthology. But by the late 2000's, the Kindle and kindle reader app for all platforms allowed SK to publish gems like MILE 81, UR (a really great SF novella centered on the early Kindle that only SK could write), and DRUNKEN FIREWORKS as e-book singles, rather than holding them back for 10 years or so until he had accumulated enough for another anthology that might have been comparable to NIGHTMARES AND DREAMSCAPES, EVERYTHING'S EVENTUAL, JUST AFTER SUNSET or some of his others.
So, in summary, if you've not read any of the stories in this anthology before, I would give it a solid 4 stars. Not 5, because some of the stories are weaker than average. But given what is left over after removing from consideration those stories that most of his "Constant Readers" like me have already bought and read, and going solely on the remaining short stories (and two very weak poems), I am sad to say that I think a 3 star rating is actually pretty generous.
JM Tepper
135 of 149 people found the following review helpful.
Short stories by Stephen King? Count me in! A strong collection of the darkness of the could-be-real
By Nathan Webster
A new short story collection by Stephen King is one of the few literary events I truly look forward too, and I was glad to get an early look at this new book. While I like some of his recent novels, King's last couple collections ('Full Dark, No Stars,' 'Just After Sunset') have been more my preference.
This collection is aptly titled - a lot of the stories end in gruesome and bitter ways. In recent years, King's style has long since changed from the rural characterizations of his 1970s early work to a more grand guignol approach. Some will like that, and I can enjoy it in small doses. The most positive aspect of King's short stories are the tight, controlled, on-point writing within the confined space. Personally, I think his longer novels could stand some more aggressive editing. His short stories - especially this collection - seem to have gone through a round or two of outside influence.and I think that helped a lot. In a story like "Herman Wouk is Still Alive," the bitter ending needs to get wrapped up with a punch, and that happens here. I think that impact would have been lost in an extra 10 pages, for instance (I also read this story in its original magazine appearance, and something about it being in a book gives the narrative more weight...I was not as unsettled by the ending in the magazine, as I was here. Strange...).
"A Death," I think will appeal to King's longest-running fans. It's the story that captures the rural-speak "Night Shift" vibe the closest. "That Bus is Another World" is close to the grim view a lot of the stories in "Skeleton Crew" had - it's not supernatural, not even horrible in a direct, specific, "it's happening to me" way - it's the 'distance' from the horror that makes it terrible. If that makes sense.. "Mile 81" is sort of like "Mrs Todd's Shortcut," except not so benign.
Very few of the stories are straight-up supernatural. Ultimately, it's four stars for me because of that. I loved "Night Shift," for example, because of the supernatural/horror elements of the stories. They weren't "real." This collection IS real - these events, mostly, COULD happen. And frankly, that took some of the fun away for me - which isn't to say I don't appreciate the writing. As Stephen King has gotten older he's much more attracted by the grimness of what's right in front of him, rather than fictional tales of zombies or vampires. We see that not just in these stories, but his new "Finder's Keepers" trilogy, which is mostly a real-world setting, with a little supernatural influence. That same vibe is through most of these stories.
But I like ghost stories where I don't have to think that world doesn't actually exist. I like horror of creatures beyond my imagination that might not actually show up to murder me (I really liked "Revival," which WAS old-school horror)...and these stories by King are a world that could/does/will exist - and that IS a very true bazaar of bad dreams!
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