All 66 Stephen King Books Ranked From Worst To Best

Summary

• Stephen King remains a powerhouse in horror with new stories and adaptations released yearly since 1980.
• Despite his vast bibliography, some Stephen King novels stand out more than others.
• Some of King’s books, like Dreamcatcher & The Tommyknockers, are among his least favorite creations.

As the king of horror, almost all the 66 Stephen King books ranked among the best in the genre. When he authored Carrie, his first novel, in 1974, his name immediately skyrocketed to one of the most recognizable in the horror genre — both for his novels and short stories. Studios noticed Stephen King’s literary talent and offered movie adaptations immediately with Carrie. King remains a powerhouse with new stories and movie/TV adaptations coming from the mind of horror’s most cherished author every year, but how do his books compare?

King has authored over 200 stories, with short stories, novellas, and novels. Carrie was his first movie adaptation, but it was nowhere near the last. Movie adaptations of Stephen King books are released at the same frequency as his literary tales, with at least one making its debut every year since 1980. Numerous upcoming King stories are in development to become a series or movie. King’s legacy makes his last name the definition of the genre. Each of Stephen King’s novels is impeccable in its own right, but some Stephen King books rank higher than others.

Stephen King’s short story collections are not included in this list.

66 Dreamcatcher

An Alien Invasion Disrupts A Camping Trip Among Friends

Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher amalgamates some of horror’s greatest sci-fi elements, including alien invasion and body horror. The story is set in Derry, Maine, one of the three fictional towns that King created for his literary multiverse. Dreamcatcher has some captivating moments but they’re few and far between compared to the book’s underwhelming scenes and dialogue that could’ve been bettered had its plot not been reliant on so many sub-genres meshing together.

Despite its closeness to the source material, even the movie adaptation is regarded as one of King’s worst — though some find it underrated. King himself said he doesn’t like Dreamcatcher very much (via Rolling Stone). He said he wrote the book after an accident where he was out walking and was hit by a van. He said, “I was pretty stoned when I wrote it, because of the Oxy, and that’s another book that shows the drugs at work.” He personally ranked it below The Tommyknockers as his least favorite release.

65 The Tommyknockers

Aliens Invade A Small Town

The Tommyknockers is a Lovecraftian tale with Stephen King stylization, However, it was also one of King’s first attempts to go outside the horror genre with a pure sci-fi tale here. There are horror elements, as King drifts into hints of body horror in the story, but at the end of the day, this ended up as one of King’s lesser-liked books in his illustrious career. Not only was it disappointing for fans at the time of its release, but it is one of the books King himself hates the most.

King blames the poor writing on his drug use at the time, and he calls it an “awful book” that he wrote while embroiled in the harsh drug addiction that he dealt with in the 1980s. However, he said it had some good ideas underneath it all (via Rolling Stone). “The Tommyknockers is an awful book. That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act. And I’ve thought about it a lot lately,” he said at the time. “The book is about 700 pages long, and I’m thinking, ‘There’s probably a good 350-page novel in there.‘”

64 Cell

Cell Phones Cause A Zombie Outbreak

If there’s one thing that Stephen King books do well, it’s the apocalypse. In the 2006 novel Cell, a New England artist discovers that a bizarre cellular signal transforms people into zombie-like creatures. It is no George A. Romero horror story, but it is King’s valiant attempt at making his mark in the zombie horror sub-genre. Due to the vast amount of literature featuring the living dead, it reads as an unremarkable tale that could’ve been far better had he focused more on the technological aspects and social commentary that was woven into Cell.

It was mostly lightweight stuff and the movie that resulted received terrible reviews. Interestingly, Stephen King wrote the script for Cell and decided to change the story’s ending, as the book ends without a clear resolution and readers have to determine if the book’s hero, Clay, is able to save his son Johnny or not. It didn’t help as the movie ended up certified rotten with an 11% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and even the audience hated it, rating it at a low 17% rotten score.

63 Rose Madder

A Woman Runs From An Abusive Relationship

Rose Madder features acommon theme in King’s stories: domestic violence. It is an unbelievable tale about a woman named Rose who dares to leave her abusive husband before he has the chance to take her life. Rose then finds a painting where she sees her life mirrored in the imagery. The painting itself constantly changes and expands, and soon Rose has to help a woman in the painting save her baby while having to protect herself when her abusive husband finds her.

King said in his memoir On Writing that he was “trying too hard” when writing this novel. While its story is important, the book’s fantasy elements threaten to overwhelm the true message. It seems that the best villain in the book was “Nearly Normal Norman,” the husband, and when the story veered into the arena of mythology, it kind of fell apart. However, King did write a solid story of an abusive relationship, which he had done before, but made the woman here powerful, standing on her own.

62 The Regulators

A Young Boy With Psychic Powers Entraps His Neighborhood

Stephen King returned to his pseudonym of Richard Bachman years after retiring the name with the book The Regulators. Unlike the previous Bachman novels, King let his fans know this was him as he released it simultaneously with Desperation in 1996. The two novels act as mirror stories to one another, taking place in a parallel universe with the same characters, but in very different situations. King wanted to tell two stories — a horror tale under the name King and a more fantasy story under the Bachman name.

In The Regulators, the story follows various people who live in a small neighborhood, but all find themselves sucked into a horrific situation thanks to a young boy who might have supernatural powers that he can’t fully control. This manifests when mysterious people show up in vans and begin shooting people, which leads to an increase in local violence. The Regulators is more complex than Desperation but wasn’t quite as strong of a tale.

61 Gwendy’s Button Box

A Young Girl In Castle Rock Meets A Strange Man

While Gwendy’s Button Box is considered a novella, it is consistently listed under King’s bibliography of full-length novels. He co-wrote it with Richard Chizmar, and it follows the story of a young girl named Gwendy Peterson, who lives in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine. Castle Rock, King’s most beloved fictional town, returns to his novels for the first time since he said goodbye in Needful Things.

It isn’t a very remarkable story, as it is composed of remnants of each author that merge into an account that only strengthens the mythos of Castle Rock rather than Gwendy’s experiences in the town. Chizmar and King are strong writers, but their styles are different and that makes the book an unfortunate contrast to most King novels, as it makes it a strange read at times. However, King said that it was Chizmar who helped him finish the story, with the two re-writing each other’s work.

”
I had a story I couldn’t finish, and [Chizmar] showed me the way home with style and panache
” (via
EW
).

60 From A Buick 8

A Haunted Car That Might Be A Portal

King has written several stories about cars throughout his career. From A Buick 8 features a supernatural car that can shift between worlds. It’s an entirely different take on his first story about a possessed car, Christine, but its uniqueness does not make it better than its predecessor. It lacks the excitement attached to a killer Stephen King car story and opts for a bizarre story about a car that can travel between worlds instead. This is far more reminiscent of Charlie Manx’s Rolls-Royce Wraith in Joe Hill’s novel, NOS4A2.

The story has little in the way of a plot arc, but the idea of a kid learning more about his dad through the car is pure King. The novel is one of the few that King optioned to a movie studio, but it was never able to get made. George A. Romero, Tobe Hooper, and Thomas Jane have all been attached to the story, but it has never made it to the big or small screen, likely because of the lack of an in-depth plot.

59 Gwendy’s Final Task

Gwendy’s Box Returns Decades Later

Stephen King collaborated with fellow writer Richard Chizmar to write the Gwendy’s Button Box trilogy. In this finale, the mysterious and destructive button box makes its final appearance after Gwendy reaches fame as a successful novelist and rising political star. Gwendy reconciles with the box, drawn to both its remarkable effects on well-being and its terrible power. King gets the chance to bring in more of his favorite sci-fi influences, as the main character must go from King’s cursed Castle Rock to the MF-1 space station.

The stakes are incredibly high in the book, but King and Chizmar have distinctly different styles, and the change in tone hurts here. This was the end of the Gwendy trilogy and the two authors sought to take it to an apocalyptic level. It is a good ending to what started out as a mostly slight and short tale, and one that morphed into something entertaining and exciting.

58 The Running Man

A Deadly Futuristic Game Show

Set in 2025, The Running Man tells the story of Ben Richards as he participates in a game show that shares a title with the novel. The contestants are required to outrun hunters who are sent out to kill themunder the totalitarian regime of the new world. Ben is a man living in this world who needs money for his gravely ill daughter and agrees to the competition so he can afford her medicine. However, the games are dangerous and soon Ben realizes his family might also be in danger.

The Running Man is as if Stephen King had written a long-form episode of Black Mirror. The book features elements of Charlie Brooker’s series with its dystopian setting and the exploration of technology’s impact on the world. The Running Man was also a Richard Bachman book that predicted the rise of reality television two decades before it became such a successful genre. It also spawned a fun adaptation starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and will get a second one soon from Edgar Wright.

57 Thinner

A Woman Curses A Man To Waste Away

Billy Halleck is cursed by a Romani man named Taduz Lemke after killing an elderly woman in a car accident and getting away with it in court. Soon, he begins to shed weight at an alarming rate. While doctors speculate that he likely has cancer, others involved in his legal battle begin to show signs of growing scales and painful acne, all of which were not present before the case. The man then has to find out more about the curse and see if there is a way to reverse it before he wastes away.

Thinner has not aged well due to its ascription of cursesalongside Romani people and their culture, but its story remains socially relevant. At its core, the novel is about the pressures of weight loss and disordered eating. Tom Holland (Cujo) adapted the novel, which was the last that King wrote as Richard Bachman before his discovery, into a movie that received mostly negative reviews and barely made back its budget at the box office.

56 Sleeping Beauties

Every Woman In The World Falls Into A Deep Sleep

While King’s works with his son, Joe Hill, are the most well-known King family collaborations, he also co-authored a novel with his youngest son, Owen. Sleeping Beauties features women wrapped in gauze who could become feral if given the opportunity. It is a bizarre story that includes a somewhat biblical character named Evie (Eve Black), the only woman who is immune to the illness that is causing women to fall into deep slumbers. If the women are awakened they wake up as feral and violent creatures.

This global pandemic (“Aurora”) is unlike any other in King’s repertoire, making it stand out among the rest of his novels that feature a dystopian world or apocalyptic disaster. It is clear that this is a book that Stephen and Owen King wanted to write as a message about the women in the world and the dangers they face, but at times it seems a little heavy-handed.

55 Rage

A Young Man Takes His Class Hostage

Rage is the first novel King penned under the name Richard Bachman. Since he was restricted to publishing one book a year, he created Bachman to produce more content outside the horror genre. Rage is also the only book that King wrote that he has taken off the market because of the rash of school shootings across America. According to King, “I pulled it because in my judgment it might be hurting people, and that made it the responsible thing to do” (via Business Insider).

The story is good, but it is a challenging read that struggles when putting readers in the mind of the school shooter, and seeing everything from his point of view, which is often the view of a young man with no moral character. Rage‘s conclusion is particularly maddening, as it finds the school shooter with a somewhat sympathetic ending where he is found not guilty due to his mental instability; his victims find no justice. However, that is also King’s point, as he questions who is really responsible for these tragedies.

54 Elevation

A Man Battles A Mysterious Disease

When Scott Carey discovers that he has contracted a strange illness, he is faced with several symptoms that are nothing short of bizarre. Set in Castle Rock, Maine, Elevation includes social and political discourse intertwined with an otherworldly story of a man struggling to be cured of his new ailment. It is considered a sequel to Gwendy’s Button Box, but it is more of a soft sequel than anything. “It’s almost like a sequel to Gwendy. Sometimes you seed the ground, and you get a little fertilizer, and things turn out,” King explained (via EW).

It isn’t an entirely remarkable tale, as its attempt at detailing specific social problems in the world tends to fall short of achieving its intended purpose. This is also short, a novella in length, and while it is one of King’s more political-leaning stories, its main message is that people can just get along if they try. There is a movie in the works, but it hasn’t made it to production yet.

53 The Gunslinger (Dark Tower Book #1)

Roland Begins His Journey To The Dark Tower

The Gunslinger is the first installment in King’s The Dark Tower series. It introduces Roland Deschain, one of the last remaining gunslingers, who must navigate a fantastical world filled with demons, monstrous creatures, and more. In this story, nothing much happens other than Roland wandering across the desert, looking for the Man in Black. He does meet Jake in this novel, but this is more of a meditative tale that doesn’t dig too deep into the mythology that makes it such a great series. However, it is important to read before starting the main journey.

While it is not a particularly bad novel, it’s the weakest of the books in this particular series. Stephen King is primarily recognized for his horror novels, and The Gunslinger is far more fantasy-oriented than anything he had done before this 1982 book. It was new to the author’s general wheelhouse, and it seems that King struggled to get his pacing right with this introduction to the Dark Tower.

52 Insomnia

A Man With Insomnia Sees Mysterious Creatures

When Ralph Roberts of Derry, Maine, begins to experience severe insomnia, his sleep deprivation allows for supernatural abilities to develop. He perceives people’s auras as well as entities that are divided into “The Purpose” and “The Random.” It is an investigation into the realities of life while questioning the concepts of fate and destiny. The problem with the book is that when the demonic creatures become the main part of the story, it loses a little concerning the best parts of the book — the characters and their relationship with each other.

Insomnia ties in with several Stephen King books, including The Dark Tower, IT, Dreamcatcher, Black House, and Pet Semetary. While it could be perceived as solely serving the purpose of being a universe-building device, the lengthy novel uniquely captures the impact of insomnia on the human psyche as well as life’s greater design.

51 Song Of Susannah (Dark Tower Book #6)

Susanna’s Story In The Dark Tower Series

While some book series get better over time, The Dark Tower’s sixth novel, Song of Susannah, proved that some things don’t always hold up over the years. As the title indicates, this book in the series follows Susanna Dean mostly, as she is trapped in her own mind by Mia, the former demon who is now pregnant in this part of the tale.

The fantastical elements are only utilized in an attempt to connect Stephen King’s massive multiverse, as the characters find themselves in the author’s own home with a copy of his novel ‘Salem’s Lot. Thanks to the personal Easter eggs King includes (including Father Callahan from ‘Salem’s Lot), King even introduces himself in this book as a character. Song of Susannah remains slightly better than the first novel in the series. However, it was appreciated by genre fans as it won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 2005.

50 Blaze

A Con-Artist Kidnaps A Baby

Clayton “Blaze” Blaisdell Jr. is a con artist who plans on kidnapping a wealthy man’s son in hopes of making his partner in crime proud. While the story is somewhat cut and dried, it is complicated by Blaze’s mental disability, similar to The Stand’s Trashcan Man. It impacts the entire storyline and creates a terrifying image of manipulation and coercion.

Blaze, written using the pseudonym Richard Bachman, was a complex story to craft and navigate for the author, which shows through each page as Blaze’s character is confronted with the spirit of his partner in crime. King wrote this novel before he wrote Carrie but published it decades later (via Lilja’s Library). King said at the time that he never got around to writing it because it was a “tearjerker of a book,” and he was writing horror as King. He felt it needed to be a Bachman book, to set it aside from his popular novels.

49 The Dark Tower (Dark Tower Book #7)

The Secrets Of The Dark Tower Revealed

The Dark Tower’s seventh installment and the final chapter of the story, The Dark Tower, features Stephen King as a secondary character. Jake rescues King from the van that nearly killed him in 1999. By the time King made himself a fully-fledged character in his own books, things seemed to grind to a halt for many fans of the Dark Tower series. This is also the novel that King wanted to wrap up the story in, and for people who had followed the journey for over two decades, it would never end how everyone had hoped it would.

It is an interesting read and showcases the author’s ability to weave his personal stories into the greater narratives of his fantastical and horrific tales. Despite all of its strong aspects, several elements introduced in this book cause the overall series to become a bit more complex than is entirely necessary. The book won the British Fantasy Award in 2005 but was polarizing to many fans of the series.

48 Roadwork

A Man Takes A Stand To Save His Hometown

A Richard Bachman book, Roadwork tells the story of Barton George Dawes. While grieving over the loss of his child and divorce, he delves further into mental instability with the news that he will be left homeless and jobless as an interstate makes its way through his Midwestern town. The story is a personal one, as King said he wrote it to come to terms with his mother’s death (via The Guardian), something he also wrote about in the short story, The Woman in the Room.

“I think it was an effort to make some sense of my mother’s painful death the year before – a lingering cancer had taken her off inch by painful inch. Following this death I was left both grieving and shaken by the apparent senselessness of it all…
Roadwork
tries so hard to be good and find some answers to the conundrum of human pain.”

The Stephen King book is currently in development to become a full-length movie with Andy Muschietti (IT: Chapter One and IT: Chapter Two) set to produce it and Pablo Trapero as its director.

47 Bag Of Bones

A Writer Develops Writer’s Block After His Wife’s Death

After author Mike Noonan’s pregnant wife unexpectedly dies, he is sent into a state of writer’s block that he is desperate to break free from. He isolates himself at a lakeside home in Maine in hopes of bringing back his authorial spark. While there, he meets a young widowed mother and her daughter and develops a psychic connection with the girl. This is where it becomes a riveting paranormal story, but it leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

The book is considered one of King’s most literary novels as he tells his own story of the struggle writers go through. It went on to win the 1999 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel. The book was also turned into a television miniseries directed by Mick Garris, who has helmed several of King’s works. It stars Pierce Brosnan (James Bond movies) as Mike Noonan, with Annabeth Gish as his wife Jo. The miniseries changed things up from the novel, including changes to the actual ending of the story.