1983 · Stephen King · 374 pages · Horror
Pet Sematary is Stephen King's most personal and most disturbing novel, a book he famously considered too dark to publish. It works because the horror isn't supernatural at its core. It's the horror of a parent confronting what they would do to undo the worst thing that could happen. The answer King provides is devastating.
1974 · Stephen King · 199 pages · Horror
Carrie is the book that started everything for Stephen King, and its power comes not from the telekinesis but from the cruelty that activates it. The epistolary format was experimental for horror fiction in 1974, and while the book is rougher than what followed, its central portrait of a girl destroyed by the people around her has lost none of its force.
1983 · Stephen King · 526 pages · Horror
Christine is a Stephen King novel about a possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury that corrupts its teenage owner, and it works better as a story about obsession and toxic masculinity than as straight horror. The car is a great metaphor that occasionally becomes a silly monster, and the supporting characters are more interesting than the one being consumed. It's mid-tier King with a concept that has outlasted the execution.