Book · 1999
Hearts in Atlantis
Five connected novellas and stories by Stephen King, following shared characters across the years, rooted in the nineteen sixties.
- Year
- 1999
- Kind of horror
- Period, Psychological
Five linked pieces, three longer novellas and two shorter stories, that share characters and drift forward through time so the same lives keep resurfacing at different ages. Read them in order and it plays almost like a broken up novel rather than a set of separate stories.
It leans coming of age as much as horror, with the strange stuff creeping in round the edges rather than kicking the door down. That is the kind of fear I like best on a quiet night: something unsettling humming under an ordinary life, not a monster waiting in the wardrobe.
The author's own note insists the places are invented but the decade is not, which gives the whole collection a slightly haunted, this-really-happened feel even before anything supernatural turns up. Good for a slow evening with tea rather than terror, when you want atmosphere more than jump scares.
It suits anyone who wants their nostalgia with a faint chill running through it, best read somewhere quiet with the lamp on rather than in company.
If you like this, try
Another
A new pupil meets a mysterious classmate, then finds his class caught up in a string of terrible deaths.
Bag of Bones
A grieving writer retreats to an isolated lake house, where writer’s block and delusions make solitude frightening.
Carrie
A telekinetic teenager's revenge after a cruel prom night prank turns Chamberlain, Maine into a nightmare.
Coldheart Canyon
A horror novel about a fading movie star and a fan whose interest in him has become an obsession.