If It Bleeds by Stephen King

From #1 New York Times bestselling author, legendary storyteller, and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary collection of four new and compelling novellas—Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, The Life of Chuck, Rat, and the title story If It Bleeds—each pulling you into intriguing and frightening places.

The novella is a form King has returned to over and over again in the course of his amazing career, and many have been made into iconic films, including “The Body” (Stand By Me) and “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” (< font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Shawshank Redemption). Like Four Past Midnight, Different Seasons, and most recently Full Dark, No Stars, If It Bleeds is a uniquely satisfying collection of longer short fiction by an incomparably gifted writer.

I've been undecided whether to bother leaving a review or not. It's not like Stephen King needs my input or opinion to boost his book sales. I will just say I enjoyed the first story the most because I like coming of age tales with a spooky twist. The last story didn't do it for me at all. Stories of writers striking deals with...whatever in order to write a great book have kind of played out and been done to death. The second and third stories were just ok. If I rated the 4 stories in order of appearance it would be 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars and 2 stars. For me the stories grew progressively worse. If I add that up and divide it by 4 stories I would rate the book at 3.5 stars.