Bazaar of Bad Dreams - Stephen King

You all know I’m a huge fan of Stephen King and although I love his characteristically long winded novels, I have to admit to having a soft spot for his Short Story Collections.
One of my all time favourite stories is The Long Walk which I first read in King’s Bachman Books Collection, ever since I’ve always looked forward to his new publications.

Bazaar of Bad Dreams is a little different; many of the stories included have previously been released in a different format although this is the first time they can been seen together in print format. These are the stories you will find within the covers.

Mile 81 – E-book 2011
Premium Harmony – November 9, 2009 issue of The New Yorker
Batman and Robin Have an Altercation – September 2012 issue of Harper’s Magazine
The Dune – Autumn 2011 issue of Granta
Bad Little Kid – Newly Published
A Death – March 9, 2015 issue of The New Yorker
The Bone Church – November 2009 issue of Playboy
Morality – July 2009 issue of Esquire
Afterlife – June 2013 issue of Tin House
Ur – Ur e-book (2009)
Herman Wouk Is Still Alive – May 2011 issue of The Atlantic
Under the Weather – Paperback edition of Full Dark, No Stars (2011)
Blockade Billy – Blockade Billy (2010)
Mister Yummy – Newly Published
Tommy – March 2010 issue of Playboy
The Little Green God of Agony – A Book of Horrors (2011)
That Bus Is Another World – August 2014 issue of Esquire
Obits – Newly Published
Drunken Fireworks – Drunken Fireworks audiobook (2015)
Summer Thunder – Turn Down the Lights (2013)

I’ve read three of the included titles and they’re typically brilliant, classical King and thoroughly entertaining.

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From Stephen King’s Website

There are thrilling connections between stories; themes of morality, the afterlife, guilt, what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past. “Afterlife” is about a man who died of colon cancer and keeps reliving the same life, repeating his mistakes over and over again. Several stories feature characters at the end of life, revisiting their crimes and misdemeanors. Other stories address what happens when someone discovers that he has supernatural powers—the columnist who kills people by writing their obituaries in “Obits;” the old judge in “The Dune” who, as a boy, canoed to a deserted island and saw names written in the sand, the names of people who then died in freak accidents. In “Morality,” King looks at how a marriage and two lives fall apart after the wife and husband enter into what seems, at first, a devil’s pact they can win.

It will also include an introduction to each story by the writer, in which he will provide “autobiographical comments on when, why and how he came to write it”, as well as “the origins and motivation of each story. His editor at Hodder & Stoughton, Philippa Pride, predicted the inclusion would “delight all his readers including those who love his insight into the craft of writing”. A mix of biography and tips on writing, On Writing was published 15 years ago, in 2000.

In the new collection, King writes of how “little by little, writers develop their own styles, each as unique as a fingerprint. Traces of the writers one reads in one’s formative years remain, but the rhythm of each writer’s thoughts – an expression of his or her very brain waves, I think – eventually becomes dominant.