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Stephen King's Top Book Recommendations

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Want to know what books Stephen King recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Stephen King's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

Red Moon

Acclaimed, award-winning author Benjamin Percy joins the GCP list with an epic and terrifying thriller set in the American West.

They live among us.
They are our neighbors, our mothers, our lovers.
They change.

When government agents kick down Claire Forrester's front door and murder her parents, Claire realizes just how different she is. Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and hours later stepped off it, the only passenger left alive, a hero. Chase Williams has sworn to protect the people of the United States from the menace in...
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Recommended by Stephen King, and 1 others.

Stephen KingFinished RED MOON, by Benjamin Percy. A werewolf epic. Can't stop thinking about it. (Source)

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2

Dominion

C.J. Sansom rewrites history in a thrilling novel that dares to imagine Britain under the thumb of Nazi Germany.

1952. Twelve years have passed since Churchill lost to the appeasers and Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany. The global economy strains against the weight of the long German war against Russia still raging in the east. The British people find themselves under increasingly authoritarian rule -- the press, radio, and television tightly controlled, the British Jews facing ever greater constraints.

But Churchill's Resistance soldiers on. As defiance...
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Recommended by Stephen King, and 1 others.

Stephen KingThat book DOMINION is terrific. And no, this isn't one of those publisher-sponsored blurbs. I just fell in love with it. Nice and long, too. (Source)

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3

The Killer Next Door

Everyone who lives at 23 Beulah Grove has a secret. If they didn't, they wouldn't be renting rooms in a dodgy old building for cash--no credit check, no lease. It's the kind of place you end up when you you've run out of other options.
The six residents mostly keep to themselves, but one unbearably hot summer night, a terrible accident pushes them into an uneasy alliance. What they don't know is that one of them is a killer. He's already chosen his next victim, and he'll do anything to protect his secret.
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Recommended by Stephen King, and 1 others.

Stephen KingIf you read Alex Marwood's THE WICKED GIRLS, her new one--THE KILLER NEXT DOOR--is even better. Scary as hell. Great characters. (Source)

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4

Local Souls

Through memorable language and bawdy humor, Gurganus returns to his mythological Falls, North Carolina, home of Widow. This first work in a decade offers three novellas mirroring today’s face-lifted South, a zone revolutionized around freer sexuality, looser family ties, and superior telecommunications, yet it celebrates those locals who have chosen to stay local. In doing so, Local Souls uncovers certain old habits—adultery, incest, obsession—still very much alive in our New South, a "Winesburg, Ohio" with high-speed Internet.

Wells Tower says of Gurganus, "No...
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Recommended by Stephen King, and 1 others.

Stephen KingReading LOCAL SOULS, by Allan Gurganus, and came across a nice quote attributed to Joe Louis: "I did the best I could with what I had." (Source)

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5
A year ago a boy was found murdered at a girlsʼ boarding school, and the case was never solved. Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to join Dublin’s Murder Squad when sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey arrives in his office with a photo of the boy with the caption: “I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.” Stephen joins with Detective Antoinette Conway to reopen the case—beneath the watchful eye of Holly’s father, fellow detective Frank Mackey. With the clues leading back to Holly’s close-knit group of friends, to their rival clique, and to the tangle of relationships that bound them all to the... more
Recommended by Stephen King, and 1 others.

Stephen KingRead THE SECRET PLACE, by Tana French, when it comes out. You'll understand then. Great book. (Source)

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6

The Accident

From the author of the New York Times-bestselling and Edgar Award-winning The Expats
 
As dawn approaches in New York, literary agent Isabel Reed is turning the final pages of a mysterious, anonymous manuscript, racing through the explosive revelations about powerful people, as well as long-hidden secrets about her own past. In Copenhagen, veteran CIA operative Hayden Gray, determined that this sweeping story be buried, is suddenly staring down the barrel of an unexpected gun. And in Zurich, the author himself is hiding in a shadowy expat life, trying to atone...
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Recommended by Stephen King, and 1 others.

Stephen KingTHE ACCIDENT, by Chris Pavone: if you like real nail-biters, this is the best one so far this year. (Source)

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7

Missing You

It's a profile, like all the others on the online dating site. But as NYPD Detective Kat Donovan focuses on the accompanying picture, she feels her whole world explode, as emotions she’s ignored for decades come crashing down on her. Staring back at her is her ex-fiancé Jeff, the man who shattered her heart—and who she hasn’t seen in 18 years.

Kat feels a spark, wondering if this might be the moment when past tragedies recede and a new world opens up to her. But when she reaches out to the man in the profile, her reawakened hope quickly darkens into suspicion and then terror as an...
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Recommended by Stephen King, and 1 others.

Stephen KingThe new Harlan Coben is twisty and terrific. The stuff about the cops' wives is especially good. Beautiful observation. I'm jealous. (Source)

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8

Doing Harm

“It's amazing that there are so many different ways to die in a hospital that have nothing to do with being sick…”

Steve Mitchell, happily married with a wife and two kids, is in line for a coveted position at Boston's University Hospital when his world goes awry. His over-reaching ambition causes him to  botch a major surgery, and another of his patients mysteriously dies. Steve’s nightmare goes from bad to worse when he learns that the mysterious death was no accident but the act of a sociopath.  A sociopath he knows and who has information that could destroy Steve’s...
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Recommended by Stephen King, and 1 others.

Stephen KingDOING HARM, by Kelly Parsons: best damn medical thriller I've read in 25 years. Terrifying OR scenes, characters with real texture. (Source)

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9

Authority (Southern Reach #2)

The bone-chilling, hair-raising second installment of the Southern Reach Trilogy

After thirty years, the only human engagement with Area X—a seemingly malevolent landscape surrounded by an invisible border and mysteriously wiped clean of all signs of civilization—has been a series of expeditions overseen by a government agency so secret it has almost been forgotten: the Southern Reach. Following the tumultuous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the agency is in complete disarray.

John Rodríguez (aka "Control") is the Southern Reach's newly...
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Recommended by Stephen King, and 1 others.

Stephen KingI'm loving THE SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY, by Jeff Vandermeer. Recommended by an indie bookseller. Creepy and fascinating. (Source)

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10

Annihilation (Southern Reach #1)

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up...
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Stephen KingI'm loving THE SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY, by Jeff Vandermeer. Recommended by an indie bookseller. Creepy and fascinating. (Source)

Laura Dassow WallsA colleague of mine, Roy Scranton, knows Jeff VanderMeer and brought him to Notre Dame a few weeks ago for a reading. Way in advance, Roy said, ‘Laura, you’re going to love this guy, he’s the weird Thoreau.’ (Source)

James BradleyIn the introduction to The Weird, the 2011 anthology that Jeff Vandermeer and his wife Ann edited, they suggest the weird isn’t a genre or a form so much as a technique or an affect, a thing that lurks in the interstices, and which emerges in unexpected and unsettling ways. I rather love this idea, not least because it captures something of what makes both Annihilation and its two sequels,... (Source)

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11

Acceptance (Southern Reach #3)

It is winter in Area X, the mysterious wilderness that has defied explanation for thirty years, rebuffing expedition after expedition, refusing to reveal its secrets. As Area X expands, the agency tasked with investigating and overseeing it—the Southern Reach—has collapsed on itself in confusion. Now one last, desperate team crosses the border, determined to reach a remote island that may hold the answers they've been seeking. If they fail, the outer world is in peril.

Meanwhile, Acceptance tunnels ever deeper into the circumstances surrounding the creation of Area X—what...
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Recommended by Stephen King, and 1 others.

Stephen KingI'm loving THE SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY, by Jeff Vandermeer. Recommended by an indie bookseller. Creepy and fascinating. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read Stephen King's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.