There’s a fair amount of criticism out there about Stephen King. A lot of it is valid, but there are certain times that he’s the perfect author to be reading. Like last night when a winter storm blew through. Freezing temperatures, snow, ice, and high winds made it look like an Artic wasteland outside. As I lay reading under my warm blankets, I paused for a moment and listened to the wind making the house creak and the sleet hitting the windows, and thought, “This is just about the perfect setting to be reading a Stephen King book.” The fact that it was a very damn good Stephen King book was an excellent bonus.

As if to give us a break after recent high page count books like Under the Dome and Duma Key, King delivers four short-n-sweet novellas focusing on the nastier sides of people with just a hint of the supernatural. These are four tales about the lives we build that we tell ourselves our safe, sane and secure, but there’s always darkness lurking at the edges. King points out that sometimes we’re the ones who invite that darkness in.

In 1922, a Depression-era farmer in the Midwest just wants to work with his son and read books in the evening, but his wife wants to sell some land her father left her to a hog factory and use the money to move to the city. When the two can’t reach an agreement, the farmer decides to murder her and hide the body in an old well. Even worse, he manipulates his son into helping. What results is a chilling story of the unintended consequences that one crime and the ensuing guilt can cause.

Big Driver features Tess, an author who writes cozy mysteries about a group of elderly amateur female detectives that are popular with grandma-types. Taking a short cut home from a speaking/signing engagement, a flat tire leads to Tess being raped and left for dead. After escaping, Tess realizes that since she’s a quasi-celebrity going to the police would result in a media firestorm that would taint the rest of her life so she decides to seek her own revenge.

Dave Streeter is a man with terminal cancer who gets a mysterious offer for fifteen more healthy years of life in Fair Extension, but he has to nominate someone to get a heaping dose of bad luck in his place. Since he’s got a lot of resentment and grudges against his best friend Tom and his perfect life, Streeter decides that his old buddy deserves some misfortune.

The question in A Good Marriage is how well do you know your spouse? Darcy and Bob have been together 25 years and if things are a bit dull and ordinary at this point, they’ve built a good life and are generally content. When Bob’s away on business, Darcy goes looking for batteries in the garage and discovers a horrifying secret that her husband has been keeping.

This is some of the best stuff that King has done in years. By focusing on human nature rather than supernatural monsters, he was able to create some very relatable yet scary stories. We know that we won’t really be trapped in old hotels filled with ghosts or live in a town overrun by vampires or chased by demon cars that drive themselves. But getting a flat tire on a lonely road? Finding a dark secret about a spouse? Being jealous of a friend doing better than yourself? Watching your life unravel because of a bad decision you’ve tried to hide? Those are things that we really fear, and King uses them all skillfully to deliver some of his creepiest stories yet.