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Jeremy Urquhart
Published 8 minutes ago
Jeremy has more than 2100 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings).
When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account.
He is also currently in the process of trying to become a Stephen King expert by reading all 2397 novels written by the author.
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When you’ve written dozens upon dozens of books across a span of more than 50 years, some are going to get overshadowed by others. This is the case for Stephen King’s ongoing body of work, as he’s put out more than one novel a year (on average, and occasionally as Richard Bachman), and then if you take into account novellas and short stories, you really start drowning.
So, what follows will just focus on the novels, with some of the shorter ones here sometimes classified as novellas. All were published as standalone stories, though, which might be the main thing in making them “novels.” Beyond horror staples like The Shining, It, and Carrie, King has written or co-written so many more stories, and the following are the most obscure of the bunch, at least if you go by the number of ratings on Goodreads (said numbers are subject to change, in time, of course).
10 'Sleeping Beauties' (2017)
Ratings on Goodreads: 94,269
Image via Scribner
Co-written with his son, Owen King, Sleeping Beauties is one of many Stephen King books where, upon an attempt to describe it, the first adjective you might well settle on is “long.” This one’s up to about 700 pages, depending on the formatting, and it’s not afraid to let you know it’s something of an epic, given there is a list of all the characters at the novel’s start, like you might also see at the beginning or end of some editions of War and Peace.
Okay, Sleeping Beauties isn't an epic to that extent, but it’s a dark fairytale on a fairly grand scale, and has a premise that involves women all around the world falling into a deep and mysterious sleep, with the men left awake forced to fend for themselves. There’s a bit more to it than that, and things do get weird, enough so that no one has attempted to make Sleeping Beauties into a TV series or movie (at least at the time of writing). That’s a bit of an ongoing trend here: many of the less-read Stephen King stories are the ones that don’t have movie or TV adaptations, so it’s either the case that his most readable stories tend to get adapted, or maybe that the adaptations drive further interest in reading the source material.
9 'Lisey's Story' (2006)
Ratings on Goodreads: 93,932
Image via Charles Scribner's Sons
One of many Stephen King stories to be about writing, or a writer, in one way or another, Lisey’s Story is famously the novel of King’s he’s singled out as his personal favorite. Look, you can see why it means a lot to King personally, since it’s a remarkably personal novel that feels like a love letter to his wife, as well as something that reflects his own thoughts on mortality and legacy, but…
…like, Lisey’s Story is also a bit unreadable. It can be appreciated, and you can understand why King wrote it – and why he likes it – but if you're not Stephen King, or a family member of King’s, then it’s a bit of a slog to get through. This one is understandably one of his least-read novels, and it’s hard to recommend it unless you're invested enough in King’s body of work to feel genuinely compelled to read every single thing he’s written.
8 'The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole' (2012)
Ratings on Goodreads: 92,522
Image via Donald M. Grant, Publisher
The least essential book in the overall The Dark Tower series would have to be the 8th, or the 4.5th, The Wind Through the Keyhole. Like, it was the 8th one published, coming after the series concluded with the 7th book, but it takes place between book 4 and 5, so that makes it an interquel… kind of, because it’s another Stephen King story about storytelling, and so there’s a story in a story going on here.
There’s an undeniable sense of “That’s it?” with this one, even though The Wind Through the Keyhole is technically two or three different things at once.
As a way to spend time with the main characters from The Dark Tower once again, The Wind Through the Keyhole is sometimes charming, but that stuff feels like it was added to a novella or two that King otherwise didn’t know how to publish. There’s an undeniable sense of “That’s it?” with this one, even though The Wind Through the Keyhole is technically two or three different things at once. At the end of the day, you can read and pretty much fully appreciate The Dark Tower saga without spending time on this one.
7 'Gwendy's Button Box' (2017)
Ratings on Goodreads: 79,486
Image via Cemetery Dance
The Button Box or Gwendy trilogy is a strange one, as it’s made up of three fairly slight stories that don’t really add up to tell something epic or satisfyingly complex. The first of the bunch, Gwendy's Button Box, probably fares the best, as it’s a bit of a coming-of-age story with some fantastical/supernatural stuff thrown in for good measure, and it’s always nice returning to the ongoing King location of Castle Rock.
This one was released as its own thing, but is more likely a novella than a novel, and was also co-written by Richard Chizmar, who was the sole author of the trilogy’s second book before the third book saw him re-team with King. Gwendy's Button Box is just fine. It comes and goes, and doesn’t really waste much of your time, but it also doesn’t feel nearly as essential as some of the other books King was credited with writing in the 2010s.
6 'From a Buick 8' (2002)
Ratings on Goodreads: 74,391
Image via Charles Scribner's Sons
Christine was the first Stephen King novel about a spooky car, and then From a Buick 8 demonstrated that he had more to say with such a premise. Okay, narratively, both books are pretty different, in the sense that Christine does actually feel like a whole story (coherent enough, for the most part, in other words), while From a Buick 8 is chaotic and all over the place in a way that sometimes works, and sometimes proves frustrating.
At least you don’t feel let down here, the way you might with a good Stephen King novel that concludes questionably, since the whole of From a Buick 8 is trippy and confounding. If you like the book, you'll argue that the confounding stuff was all intentional, but if you're of the view it’s one of King’s weaker ones, you're probably on Team That Should Have Been Clearer. All these words were regurgitated without describing what happens here, but honestly, what does happen here?
5 'Black House' (2001)
Ratings on Goodreads: 68,471
Image via Random House
There aren’t too many sequels written by Stephen King (unless you count everything post-The Gunslinger, in The Dark Tower series, as a sequel), which makes Black House stand out. This one was published nearly two decades after its predecessor, The Talisman, and once more saw King collaborating with Peter Straub, with this book following the protagonist of The Talisman, Jack Sawyer, now as an adult instead of a 12-year-old.
King was in his wheelhouse with the coming-of-age stuff in The Talisman, sure, but Black House is a surprisingly good sequel that’s one of the better 21st-century releases associated with the author. Straub and King clearly worked well together, and though it’s exciting to hear that there is a third Talisman book planned, it’s a shame that Straub won’t be actively writing it as well, since he passed away in 2022 (though he did leave King with notes/ideas of where the third story could go).
4 'Cycle of the Werewolf' (1983)
Ratings on Goodreads: 64,754
Image via Land of Enchantment
Werewolves seemed pretty big in the 1980s, largely thanks to An American Werewolf in London and The Howling both coming out in 1981, and being uniquely unnerving as monster movies. Cycle of the Werewolf got in on the action, to some extent, as a story that had Stephen King putting his own spin on the whole werewolf sub-genre, with a short novel about a series of werewolf attacks troubling a small town over a number of months.
The story itself got a film adaptation with Silver Bullet, though that one was a bit underwhelming, compared to the source material. Though, truth be told, some might argue the source material was also a little slight, since it’s on the shorter side of things and is one of those novels that’s probably more of a novella, but whatever. Cycle of the Werewolf is cool for what it is, and deserves a little more attention than it tends to get.
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Silver Bullet
R
Horror
Release Date
October 11, 1985
Runtime
95 minutes
Director
Daniel Attias
Writers
Stephen King
Cast
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Gary Busey
Uncle Red
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Everett McGill
Reverend Lowe
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3 'The Colorado Kid' (2005)
Ratings on Goodreads: 59,208
Image via Hard Case Crime
There wouldn’t really be a way to adapt The Colorado Kid as a movie without it being a bit disappointing, but that’s because it’s a story about disappointment (though it did inspire an eventually long-running TV series called Haven). It was the first of three stories Stephen King wrote for Hard Case Crime, and his most underwhelming, since Joyland ended up being a little better, and then Later ended up being surprisingly good.
The whole thing feels like it cops out a bit, but then tries to make that copping out, regarding the mystery at the center of the story, the point. And points for trying, but The Colorado Kid still leaves you with that dreaded “that’s it?” kind of feeling. It can be the point, but that doesn’t make it good. Anyway, what is good is the fact that, at least on Goodreads, the other King-penned Hard Case Crime stories are more popular than The Colorado Kid.
2 'Never Flinch' (2025)
Ratings on Goodreads: 52,845
Image via Charles Scribner's Sons
At this stage, there are quite a few Stephen King books that feature the character of Holly Gibney, with the best ones probably being those where she’s a supporting character (like Mr. Mercedes and The Outsider). She was the protagonist of the flawed Holly, which was another attempt on King’s part to write something mostly non-horror in nature, though that book’s follow-up, Never Flinch, was a little better.
Still, on Goodreads, Holly has more ratings, and the overall rating is higher, so take from that what you will. To be honest, Never Flinch does, like The Wind Through the Keyhole, smack of a couple of different stories slammed together by King and then released as a novel, but sequences found within are sufficiently tense and engaging, with the overall book not being as frustrating or repetitive as Holly (2023), even if it does still fall quite short of being a great King novel.
1 'Gwendy's Final Task' (2022)
Ratings on Goodreads: 22,057
Image via Cemetery Dance Publications
So, Never Flinch is the most recent Stephen King novel, at the time of writing, and that might explain why it has comparatively fewer ratings than most of his works. In five or 10 years, the number of ratings could well have increased quite a bit, but that might not be as likely to happen for Gwendy’s Final Task, which is older and has easily the fewest ratings of any novel/stand-alone novella of King’s on Goodreads.
It's also one of his least essential works, once more co-written with Richard Chizmar, with the most enjoyable parts here just being the references and shout-outs to The Dark Tower and its mythos. Otherwise, Gwendy’s Final Task is a bizarre finale that has a now-elderly Gwendy, grappling with dementia, going into space to dispose of the first story’s titular button box. Yes, really. It’s a novel that answers the question of “Can you still jump the shark if you're countless miles above the ocean?” with a resounding “Yes.”
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