This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides - or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old...

Stephen King's second novel, Salem's Lot, is the story of a mundane town under siege from the forces of darkness. Considered one of the most terrifying vampire novels ever written, it cunningly probes the shadows of the human heart, and the insular evils of small-town America.

Twenty-three stories chronicle the experiences of people who have answered an ad for an artist's retreat, believing that they will find a peaceful refuge, only to find themselves isolated and trapped in a cavernous old theater.

Ghouls live among us, the same as normal people in every way, except their craving for human flesh. Ken Kaneki is an ordinary college student until a violent encounter turns him into the first half-human half-ghoul hybrid. Trapped between two worlds, he must survive ghoul turf wars, learn more about ghoul society, and master his new powers.

Two boys' lives are changed forever when a sinister travelling carnival stops at their Illinois town.

Stephen King introduces each of these short stories with a passage about its origins or his motivations for writing it. There are 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. "I made them especially for you," says King. "Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth."

Jamie Conklin, a boy born with an unnatural ability to see and learn things no one else can, is enlisted to help an NYPD detective pursue a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave.

Allison Sekemoto survives in the Fringe, the outermost circle of a vampire city, until she too becomes an immortal vampire. Forced to flee into the unknown, outside her city walls, she joins a ragged band of humans who are seeking a legend -- a possible cure to the disease that killed off most of humankind and created the rabids, the mindless creatures who threaten humans and vampires alike.

Stories of ghosts and witches, "jump" stories, scary songs, and modern-day scary stories.

Michael Myer, a psychopath left for dead, picks up where he left off stalking the halls of the hospital where his sister lies waiting.