Night Shift

by Stephen King

Book Overview

From the undisputed master of modern American horror: His first collection of short stories showcases the darkest depths of his brilliant imagination and will "chill the cockles of many a heart"... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451139771
• ISBN13: 9780451139771
• Release Date: February 1979
• Publisher: Signet Book
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Great book!

I had just gotten done reading a more detailed book and wanted something that was alittle easier to read but still enjoyable. This fit the bill perfectly. Was full of awesome short stories that were interesting and scary but I didn’t have to commit to reading a whole story with a long story line. Would 100% recommend.

Great stories

Great read

No dust jacket

I didn’t get what I ordered. I ordered a book with the dust jacket not without. I’m really upset about this since this is the second book that I’ve received that didn’t state that it didn’t have the dust jacket in the description. Not happy with this at all.

Love this book

I love this book. When I was younger, I read the Boogeyman, and it has stayed with me for years! All the short stories are awesome.

Love it!

love it

nice

nice

IT was a gift

I scoured the internet for suggestions for REALLY scary books. This book was one of the suggestions of an "ALL GUY" website. THey said it would keep you up at night. It ended up being a gift for my little brother so I havent actually read it.

Classic King; and it only gets better

By now, it seems likely that most mature readers who would be inclined to read Night Shift already have, and certainly nearly every Stephen King fan has already partaken. Of course, there is always the next generation of readers to consider, not to mention the many avid readers of novels who are surprisingly resistant to the short story format. At any rate, this is the first of King's story collections, collecting tales published in the early 1970s. They are the product of a much-less-mature writer, and were written at a time when the field of contemporary horror was also thirty years less mature. But this is Stephen King; thus, even when the plots are thin, predictable, or nonexistent, the manner of their presentation is to be savored. I first read this book in junior high school, nearly two decades ago; my only previous experience with Stephen King was the novel The Eyes of the Dragon. Those familiar with that work will agree that it leaves one ill-prepared for some of the things that transpire within the pages of Night Shift. Recently I decided to read through it again, both for a dose of nostalgia and to gain an adult sense of the stories I enjoyed so long ago. These stories have already been extensively discussed and dissected, so, as I often do with anthologies, I'll just give brief impressions of each entry. "Jerusalem's Lot" (1978): A Lovecraft tribute, written in epistolary format, that delves into a bit of the sordid history of `Salem's Lot. King manages to convey the disturbing atmosphere to the precisely right degree, with no overkill. This one remains a favorite for me, in no small part because King nails the conventions and language of nineteenth-century epistolary writing perfectly. "Graveyard Shift" (1970): Rats. That's it, really, although King's rats exceed ordinary expectations, having simultaneously evolved and devolved into monstrous parodies of their mundane antecedents. It has pretensions of being a distillation of management-employee tensions, but that's just a mechanism to get the protagonist into the basement. The rodents are the real stars of the show. "Night Surf" (1974): A companion to The Stand. More of a mood piece than a story, since the conclusion for these young people seems to be forgone. It also serves as a character study; how would you behave if the end was coming and you had nothing to do except wait? "I Am the Doorway" (1971): An astronaut returns from space to discover several eyes peering out of each of his hands; someone is using him as a conduit through which to observe our world and, eventually, to act upon it. This is a horror-writer's unique take on the well-worn science-fictional idea of possession by aliens. One of King's more unique stories, and, as it's never been a TV segment or feature film, unjustly unheralded. "The Mangler" (1972): An industrial laundry machine becomes possessed by a demonic force. Though the police investigation is fun to follow, the ending is a little over

Night Shift is the BOMB

I like this book a lot. It is one of the scariest story book I ever read. It is bone chilling and it is horrifically perfect.

Colección de Cuentos... para hablar de Terror

Así comienza la introducción al libro... Stephen King nos invita a hablar de Terror... simple y llanamente a hablar de terror.Y de ésto se trata todo el libro... una vasta colección de cuentos, no recuerdo cuántos son, que van de las historias normales y que pueden pasar un día cualquiera a grades gusanos hediondos y ratones inmensos.La gran mayoría de cuentos que se encuentran en éste libro han sido base para películas (Quién no recuerda los Niños del maíz, por ejemplo), y son excelentes historias, obviamente algunas mejores que otras, pero siempre con el sello del terror, la "Magia" de las historias que se pueden contar estando de campamento...Si lo adquieren, les recomiendo "Algunas veces vuelven" y "La Cornisa", para mi las dos mejores historias del libro

My first (second?) Stephen King book!

I might have already read a couple stories out of Skeleton Crew before I read this, but as far as I could remember, this was my first Stephen King book that I went out and bought. Since the back of the book said, and I quote: "From the depths of darkness where hideous rats defend their empire,..." I already had a passion for stories that take place in the dark and deal with monsters, so I knew that this book was going to be good. I didn't know which story this was at the time, so I read something else: The Boogeyman. Now I had heard that Stephen King was super scary, very cool, etc., but when I read this story, I nearly made a mess in my pants! What a story! Since then I have read Jerusalem's Lot, Night Surf, I am the Doorway, Graveyard Shift (the rat story!), The Mangler, The Lawnmower Man, Children of the Corn, The Ledge, Strawberry Spring, and I Know What You Need. All of them any combination of the following: Scary, weird, messed-up, hideous, gory, sad, and any other word to describe the kinds of stuff that come out of this book. Now I am afraid of rats, closets, going up into space (not that this will ever happen), heights, strangers, and, above all, the dark. Now for anyone who wants to read this, I must warn you (cue the bass instruments), this is a scary, scary, scary book. If you have a weak stomach or fear of anything like I listed above, you will really want to stop reading (which, needless to say, can't happen with *this* book!).