Night Shift
1960
- euthanasia
- terminal illness
- vampires
- crucifixes
- rosaries
- devotional medals
- douay–rheims bible
- myocardial infarction
- vietnam war
- suicide
The story
Stephen King has brought together nineteen of his most unsettling short pieces--bizarre tales of dark doing and unthinkable acts from the twilight regions where horror and madness take on eerie, unearthly forms...where noises in the walls and shadows by the bed are always signs of something dreadful on the prowl. The settings are familiar and unsuspected--a high school, a factory, a truck stop, a laundry, a field of Nebraska corn. But in Stephen King's world any place can serve as devil's ground...if the time of night is propitious, and the forces of darkness are strong, and the victims are caught just slightly off their guard... ([source](https://stephenking.com/library/story_collection/night_shift_flap.html)) --- Contains: - [Jerusalem's Lot](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14916772W/Jerusalem's_Lot) - Graveyard Shift - Night Surf - I Am the Doorway - The Mangler - The Boogeyman - Grey Matter - Battleground - Trucks - Sometimes They Come Back - Strawberry Spring - The Ledge - The Lawnmower Man - [Quitters, Inc.](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL149153W/Quitters_Inc) - I Know What You Need - [Children of the Corn](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19791056W/Children_of_the_Corn) - The Last Rung on the Ladder - The Man Who Loved Flowers - [One for the Road](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19791071W/One_for_the_Road) - The Woman in the Room --- Also contained in: - [The Shining / 'Salem's Lot / Night Shift / Carrie](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19558521W/The_Shining_'Salem's_Lot_Night_Shift_Carrie)
What it’s like
Night Shift reads as a dim, fluorescent-lit collection: the hum of a vending machine, a sodium streetlamp outside a truck stop, the flicker of a bedside lamp in a house where something is breathing in the closet. King's prose here is brisk, colloquial and close-eared, with working-class American voices, small-town gossip and the clipped rhythm of people talking over engine noise. Stories run short and punchy, many ending on a sharp turn or a grim wink rather than a slow fade, so the book suits reading in short bursts between chores or late at night with a single lamp on. Its vibe is wry dread with flashes of tenderness: unsettled, mordant, occasionally sad. Violence is frequent and often graphic, with gore in several pieces (a laundry mangler, a killer lawnmower, a cornfield cult), and there is suicide, terminal illness and a euthanasia theme running through a few stories; sexual content is limited. Some tales land more on melancholy and grief than on fright, such as the quiet mourning in the title-adjacent pieces. Best for readers who like horror grounded in ordinary places and who can tolerate blunt, bloody moments.
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