Never trust your heart to the New York Times bestselling master of suspense, Stephen King. Especially with an anthology that features the classic s...
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Dec 17, 2009
R.
rated it: 
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.
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Sep 14, 2011
Trudi
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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 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 More...
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Aug 16, 2011
Earline
rated it:
So far I've loved every short story collection of King's I've read (Different Seasons, Everything's Eventual) and this collection is amazing once again.
My favorite stories would have to be:
"I Am the Doorway"
"Quitters, Inc."
"Children of the Corn" (this one especially scared the bejesus out of me.)
"One For the Road" (sequel to 'Salem's Lot)
I remembered "Battleground" from the Nightmares & Dreamscapes series More...
My favorite stories would have to be:
"I Am the Doorway"
"Quitters, Inc."
"Children of the Corn" (this one especially scared the bejesus out of me.)
"One For the Road" (sequel to 'Salem's Lot)
I remembered "Battleground" from the Nightmares & Dreamscapes series More...
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Jul 15, 2008
Luke
rated it: 
I found this book to be hit or miss. Most stories were good with a few being must-reads and few being skip-able.
The highlights:
Jerusalem's Lot - A prequel of sorts to his novel 'Salem's Lot told through a series of letters.
Night Surf - A side-story that fits in with The Stand telling the story of a few teens as they deal with Trips.
I Am The Doorway - A more traditional science-fiction tale with a Stephen King twist.
I Know What You Need - A psychologically intr More...
The highlights:
Jerusalem's Lot - A prequel of sorts to his novel 'Salem's Lot told through a series of letters.
Night Surf - A side-story that fits in with The Stand telling the story of a few teens as they deal with Trips.
I Am The Doorway - A more traditional science-fiction tale with a Stephen King twist.
I Know What You Need - A psychologically intr More...
Jul 25, 2011
Steve
rated it:
King has put out two great short story collection. Skeleton Crew, and this one. Like all collections, this has a few weak ones, but overall, one of the best horror short story collections out there. You're catching King at time when he was hungry, so the stories are meaner and leaner than what you might find in current King efforts.
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Jul 25, 2011
Dolly
rated it:
More creepy stories! Stephen King is a master storyteller and this is an eerie collection of some of his best. I have read most of his books and these are some of the more memorable of his short stories.
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Sep 13, 2011
Dary
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Stephen King is an absolute master of the short story form.
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Aug 09, 2010
jzhunagev
rated it:
Short Tale Excursions to Horror and Dread
(A Book Review of Night Shift by Stephen King)
The short story is a literary form I rarely read, appreciate and enjoy. A handful of writers, O. Henry, Ernest Hemingway and — in light of the book I’m reviewing — Edgar Allan Poe, are some of the authors whose short fiction I’ve liked over the years. Since the short story deals with few characters in one setting that makes a single impression or impact, it's a tricky form to work More...
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Feb 09, 2012
Richie
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Jun 04, 2008
Fabian
rated it:
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 heros and (just a few) heroines, end up dead o
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Jan 29, 2012
Aunt Karen The Great
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This is a great collection of short stories and includes some of King's scariest tales (notably One for the Road which is a sequel of sorts to my favorite King novel, 'Salem's Lot and is every bit as scary as that tale; Jerusalem's Lot which is a sort of prequel to the 'Salem's Lot story; Children of the Corn and Sometimes They Come Back. I Am the Doorway strays from King's traditional horror in to Science Fiction, with terrifc results. A couple of others leave the genre behind entirely, to mixe
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Nov 13, 2011
Pat
rated it:
Outstanding. First had the opportunity to read this back in 1983. At the time, I worked swing shift at a cardboard box factory. Can remember coming home off of the graveyard shift and reading the short story "The Mangler." It was the first thing I had ever read by Stephen King, and I was hooked instantly. The man can truly write. So many of the stories showed up later as movies--with suspect results at best. The beauty of this book is that it doesn't have to be a horror story to
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Feb 01, 2012
Stefan
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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 6 to a 7.
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 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 More...
Nov 04, 2011
Diego
rated it: 
Jerusalem's Lot : 2/5
I haven't read Salem's Lot, but since it's a prequel, I guessed it would be OK to read this. Well, it was alright, well-written, but it feels too much like a prequel, it sets the mood, but all we expect is for the real thing to start, and it ends there.
Graveyard Shift : 3/5
This one is really creepy. I'm not afraid of <spoiler>rats</spoiler>, but here it's something different that encountering a small one in broad daylight, well paced More...
I haven't read Salem's Lot, but since it's a prequel, I guessed it would be OK to read this. Well, it was alright, well-written, but it feels too much like a prequel, it sets the mood, but all we expect is for the real thing to start, and it ends there.
Graveyard Shift : 3/5
This one is really creepy. I'm not afraid of <spoiler>rats</spoiler>, but here it's something different that encountering a small one in broad daylight, well paced More...
Aug 16, 2011
Žaneta
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Jul 25, 2011
Ben
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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
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Feb 18, 2011
Anthony
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There are certain horror authors whose work you expect to feel like it is from a different time ... because it is. Whether it's Stoker, Poe and Hawthorne (1800s), or even Lovecraft (early 1900s), you expect the stories to feel less current. That's usually part of the charm. The stories are still scary, but they feel almost quaint or antiquated.
What surprised me about rereading Stephen King's first short story collection was how that feeling of a different time crops up. Again, the stor More...
What surprised me about rereading Stephen King's first short story collection was how that feeling of a different time crops up. Again, the stor More...
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Mar 24, 2010
A.J.
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It's something that's hardly worth saying about a short story collection, but I'll say it anyway: some were better than others.
There. Now that we have that out of the way, I'll keep this short and sweet. I detected quite a few influences in this collection. "Graveyard Shift" might as well have been called "Ode to Poe" and "Jerusalem's Lot" tasted of Bram Stoker's Dracula. There were also a few yarns that would later evolve into novels. "Night Surf" More...
There. Now that we have that out of the way, I'll keep this short and sweet. I detected quite a few influences in this collection. "Graveyard Shift" might as well have been called "Ode to Poe" and "Jerusalem's Lot" tasted of Bram Stoker's Dracula. There were also a few yarns that would later evolve into novels. "Night Surf" More...
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Oct 14, 2009
Jeff
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Night Shift is an awesome collection of Stephen King shorts. I've been a Stephen King fan since I first read 'Salems Lot at a young age, and was only later introduced to King's talent as a short story writer through Four Past Midnight and then later, Nightmares and Dreamscapes and Everything's Eventual. I never got around to reading Night Shift, until now; I wasn't disappointed. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of film adaptations that came from this collection: Graveyard Shift, Maximum
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Jul 25, 2009
Christine
rated it:
Let me start by saying, I am not an avid Stephen King fan. Actually I have never read any of his books before, but chose this as a good way to explore his writings and see why he has so many fans. Also, I love short stories as a form that can be tremendously engaging but also leave the reader with more questions than answers. This collection was no disappointment; it pulled me in from the first story, and each successive story was so intriguing, that often I had to take a break before starting
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Jun 13, 2009
Tim
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This collection represents around twenty of Stephen King's stories from the 1970s. They are variable in quality and style so that the collection is really one for completists of King's work (who generally needs a much larger canvas than the short story) or of twentieth century American horror fiction.
There are clues to other works as ideas are tested out - 'Jerusalem's Lot' is a Lovecraftian prequel to 'Salem's Lot', 'One for the Road' is another incident from the 'Salem's Lot' unive More...
There are clues to other works as ideas are tested out - 'Jerusalem's Lot' is a Lovecraftian prequel to 'Salem's Lot', 'One for the Road' is another incident from the 'Salem's Lot' unive More...
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Oct 25, 2011
Tina
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Aug 19, 2011
Ken
rated it:
King's being written off as a hack shows critics' contempt for blue-collar fiction (i.e., that which bears witness to the other 90% of America who haven't enjoyed the same privileges of reading themselves into oblivion with unintelligible, postmodern tracts.) These stories tell life as it is lived by ordinary Americans.
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Aug 10, 2011
La Stamberga dei Lettori
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Credevo di aver esaurito la mia vena fertile per quanto riguarda i racconti brevi di Stephen King (ho faticato non poco con Incubi e deliri), ma mi sono dovuta ricredere su A volte ritornano, la sua prima antologia, nonché suo quinto libro pubblicato. Oltre a includere un gran numero di racconti di alto livello, la Prefazione alla raccolta è una delle migliori che siano mai uscite dalla sua penna. Probabilmente nessun altro autore, oltre a King, riesce a darmi una simile sensazione di complicità
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Aug 02, 2011
Ryan
rated it:
From start to finish this collection intrigued and excited my imagination... the drawngs I created from it were exciting and highly defined and felt as though they were in a continuous flow. Truth be told though, I only enjoyed about 2/3rds of the text. A couple of the stories were bland, while the highlights had great impact. The narrative flow got more engaging by the end of Night Shift.
Lawnmower man had a nice touch about morals. I am the Doorway was very fast paced and inspiring for its sci- More...
Lawnmower man had a nice touch about morals. I am the Doorway was very fast paced and inspiring for its sci- More...
Dec 16, 2010
Emma
rated it:
Night Shift is a collection of twenty short stories by Stephen King and the first collection he released. It includes many stories relating to full-length novels he had already written or would later write such as Salem's Lot, The Stand, and Dreamcatcher.
I rated each short story separately and did so immediately after reading it so I wouldn't lose track of things. The total average score came to just over four stars.
1. Jerusalem's Lot: Prequel to 'Salem's Lot. Epistolary. Cre More...
I rated each short story separately and did so immediately after reading it so I wouldn't lose track of things. The total average score came to just over four stars.
1. Jerusalem's Lot: Prequel to 'Salem's Lot. Epistolary. Cre More...
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Oct 21, 2010
Lisa
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A fantastic selection of unsettling short stories, dealing not just in the supernatural but also the darker side of life and humanity. Sometimes tense, sometimes scary, and sometimes just plain heartbreaking, this starts off well with a story first seen in Salem's Lot. Hitting it's stride around The Boogeyman, it seemed each story got better and better, to the point where almost every new one was my new favourite upon finishing. Each was absolutely the right length - expanding upon them would ha
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Oct 19, 2010
Tate
rated it:
No Fear?
Open any Stephen King book and within a few pages, you will want to crawl under to the safety of the bed sheets and hide. Night Shift is no exception. The primary difference is that in Night Shift, instead of a nine hundred-page novel, there are twenty short stories, meaning there are twenty different scare your pants off stories. Following the first page of each story I could not put the book down until it was finished. I enjoyed every tale, they were intriguing, thought provoking, More...
Open any Stephen King book and within a few pages, you will want to crawl under to the safety of the bed sheets and hide. Night Shift is no exception. The primary difference is that in Night Shift, instead of a nine hundred-page novel, there are twenty short stories, meaning there are twenty different scare your pants off stories. Following the first page of each story I could not put the book down until it was finished. I enjoyed every tale, they were intriguing, thought provoking, More...
Aug 24, 2008
Lena
rated it:
I read this book when I was like nine, so the details of the individual stories are a little fuzzy. Thirty years later, however, I am still creeped out by vague, haunting memories of one tale involving a machine, some belladonna, and a very unfortunate factory worker.
My brief childhood foray into the oeuvre of Mr. King also left me with an irrational fear of garbage disposals, but I think that was because of Firestarter.
My brief childhood foray into the oeuvre of Mr. King also left me with an irrational fear of garbage disposals, but I think that was because of Firestarter.
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