You Like It Darker: Stories

Winner of the 2025 Audie Award for Short Stories/Collections

Includes an afterword written by Stephen King and read by Sean Patrick Hopkins

Includes a bonus story, “The Music Room”

NAMED A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP 10 HORROR BOOK OF 2024
WINNER OF THE GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD FOR HORROR
FINALIST FOR THE 2025 LOCUS AWARDS

“Stephen King knows You Like It Darker and obliges with sensational new tales” ( USA TODAY ): From legendary storyteller and master of short fiction Stephen King, an extraordinary collection of stories that are “a master class in tension and full of King’s dark humor” ( The New York Times Book Review ).

“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,” writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life—both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel “the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,” and in You Like It Darker , readers will feel that exhilaration too, again and again.

“Two Talented Bastids” explores the long-hidden secret of how the eponymous gentlemen got their skills. In “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny’s most catastrophically. In “Rattlesnakes,” a sequel to Cujo , a grieving widower travels to Florida for respite and instead receives an unexpected inheritance—with major strings attached. In “The Dreamers,” a taciturn Vietnam vet answers a job ad and learns that there are some corners of the universe best left unexplored. “The Answer Man” asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.

“King’s skills as a storyteller remain undimmed” ( The Minnesota Star Tribune ) and his ability to surprise, amaze, and bring us both terror and solace is unsurpassed. “The titular darkness promised is as riveting and all-consuming as ever” ( New York magazine). You like it darker? You got it.