First came the days of the plague. Then came the dreams.Dark dreams that warned of the coming of the dark man. The apostate of death, his worn-down boot heels tramping the night roads. The warlord of the charnel house and Prince of Evil.His time is at hand. His empire grows in the west and the Apocalypse looms.

A collection of tales to invade and paralyse the mind as the safe light of day is infiltrated by the shadows of the night.As you read, the clutching fingers of terror brush lightly across the nape of the neck, reach round from behind to clutch and lock themselves, white-knuckled, around the throat. This is the horror of ordinary people and everyday objects that become strangely altered; a world where nothing is ever quite what it seems, where the familiar and the friendly lure and deceive. A world where madness and blind panic become the only reality.

Hold tight. We are going into a number of dark places, but I think I know the way. Just don't let go of my arm ...Unrivalled master of suspense Stephen King takes the unsuspecting reader on a fantastic journey through the dark shadows of our innermost fears.Do the dead sing?In this bumper collection of chilling tales, which includes the brilliant story adapted into the acclaimed movie The Mist, we meet: a woman who has never crossed The Reach, the water dividing her from the mainland; a gramma who only wants to hug little George, even after she is dead; an innocent looking toy with sinister powers; and a primeval sea creture with an insatiable appetite.

Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King's advice is grounded in the vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported, near-fatal accident in 1999 - and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery.There is a reason why Stephen King is one of the bestselling writers in the world, ever. Described in the Guardian as 'the most remarkable storyteller in modern American literature', Stephen King writes books that draw you in and are impossible to put down