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Average Customer Rating:

These stories stay with you	Customer Rating:
I read this book several years ago, and even now I cannot think of Crouch End without thinking of Slaughter Towen, or of a boney skeletal finger growing out of the toilet. Brilliant - Steven King's genius in short accessible asnd hugely entertaining form. And the TV series based on the book was OK too, but the book was better.

so weak - a bunch of turgid pointless tales	Customer Rating:
a really rubbish collection of short stories i was barely interested in a single one just 800 pages of very boring and badly handled short stories. the majority are dull to the point of turgid and a lot of them don't fully make sense the only interesting one was 'Sneakers' 1/10 this is the second awful collection of short stories by King and i won't be buying another

A "monster" collection...

Customer Rating:

Nightmares and Dreamscapes contains a diverse array of stories which will, once again, provide something both for horror fans and appreciators of more sophisticated literature. There are all-out screamers, spooky subtler stories, downright strange tales and tearjerkers. Of these, I have three favourites: - THE MOVING FINGER: This was the first King short story I read, and what compelled me to go out and buy all his collections. It is the single freakiest thing I have ever read. When you read it you will understand what I mean. - SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN - A short, snappy story about a primary school teacher who becomes convinced that the little children in her class are monsters. Builds to a typically morbid King ending and has a nice psychological aspect to it. - THE TEN O'CLOCK PEOPLE - One of the longest stories in the collection. It tells the tale of a group of people - the Ten O'Clock People of the title - who are trying to cut down on their smoking. The result of this is that they are able to see what others cannot: that many people in positions of power are actually batlike monsters in disguise. It's a very complete story and I reckon that if he had wanted to King could have expanded it into a full novel, such is the scope of the story that he sets up. But it works well short and pacy like this. There are other contributions in here, however, that fall down flat. Chattery Teeth takes King's overused "inanimate objects take on a life of their own" routine and relegates it to a side-detail which only comes into play in the last few pages. It Grows On You takes an interesting idea - a house where grisly things happen, then followed by a new wing appearing on the house overnight - and makes it plain boring. Nothing really comes of it; it reads almost like King's outline of the idea rather than an actual story based on that idea. There are others, also, that are less than impressive. Nevertheless, some of the tales in here are among the best King has written (for out-and-out gory splatter stories, Home Delivery and Rainy Season get special mentions). The fact that it's such a big volume should mean that you will find a few tales that satisfy whatever you're after. If you're a King fan, get this.

900 pages of king	Customer Rating:
A `monster' anthology, 900 pages of unadulterated King. I love the way in which he writes his short stories, they seem to explore the imagination on a level that is accessible to both adults & children. He extracts a sense of fear & terror from the reader.

Small is good

Customer Rating:

My favourite tale is probably Crouch End - a town, or more precisely Slaughter Towen - a macabre little tale about a place that used to exist that a couple of tourists come across one night, the main problem being it was a town believed to be full of black magic and sacrifice. The tourist's husband investigates a strange noise behind a bush and next news he's gone. She wanders into the local police station where they don't seem really surprised about what's happened, one of them goes to look for him... The best little story I've read. Chattery teeth - out of the Twilight Zone came, jumbo teeth! A man goes into a service station and they have a joke rack - on the joke rack are the biggest pair of walking teeth he has ever seen, he gets them for his son, he also picks up a hitchhiker. The hitchhiker decides he's easy game and wants to rob him and take his car - the teeth, which according to the store owner have never really worked swing into action - they drag this guy out into the desert and eat him! There are tooooo many good stories here to mention - no King collection would be complete without it. On saying that though I think any horror reader would love it, if you don't feel up to some of the phone book sized novels he has written. Fabulous! Each story a nugget of horror wisdom in easily digestable parts!