Stephen King has published dozens of novels and story collections since Carrie came out in 1974, and there is no official front door. Plenty of people start with the biggest book on the shelf and bounce off it. The better move is to start with the kind of scared you actually want to be. Here is how we would do it.
If you want classic horror
Carrie
King's first published novel is also one of his shortest, which makes it an easy yes. Carrie White is a bullied teenager with a power she barely understands, and the story is told partly through news clippings and testimony after the fact, so you know something terrible is coming long before prom night arrives. See the book.
'Salem's Lot
A writer comes back to a small Maine town just as its people start disappearing into the night. This is King's vampire novel, and it builds slowly, one house at a time, until the whole town feels wrong. If you like dread more than jump scares, start here. See the book.
Pet Sematary
A young family moves to rural Maine. Behind their new house, a path leads to a pet cemetery, and past that, somewhere much worse. King has said this is the book that frightened him most, and it is easily his most devastating. See the book.
If you want suspense more than monsters
Misery
A famous novelist wakes up after a car crash in the remote Colorado home of his number one fan, Annie Wilkes. She has read every book he has written, and she is not happy with what he did to her favorite character. There is nothing supernatural in it, and it may be the tensest book King has ever written. See the book.
The Outsider
A beloved Little League coach is arrested for a horrific crime, and the evidence against him is airtight. So is his alibi. It opens as a police procedural and slowly turns into something else, and it brings in Holly Gibney, one of King's best recurring characters. See the book.
If you want the big, famous ones
It
Seven kids in Derry, Maine, face something that preys on the town's children, and twenty-seven years later they have to come back and finish it. It runs well over a thousand pages, and many fans call it his best. Save it for your second or third King unless you already know you love big books. See the book.
The Stand
A weaponized flu escapes a lab and wipes out most of the world, and the survivors are pulled toward two very different leaders. It is King's great good-versus-evil epic, and if you loved the scope of It, this is the next mountain to climb. See the book.
If you want to start short
Different Seasons
Four novellas, including the stories behind The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me. Only one of the four is supernatural, which makes this the perfect sampler for readers who are not sure they are horror people. See the book.
You Like It Darker
A 2024 collection of a dozen stories that run from quietly strange to truly frightening. Each one is a quick way to find out which side of King you like best. See the book.
If you do not like horror at all
11/22/63
A high school English teacher finds a doorway to 1958 and a chance to stop the Kennedy assassination, if he can survive the five years of waiting. It is a time travel story and a love story, it is one of the best things King has written, and there is almost nothing scary in it. See the book.
The Gunslinger
The first book of The Dark Tower, King's fantasy western, follows a lone gunslinger across a desert in pursuit of the man in black. It is short and strange, and it opens onto a long series that connects to nearly everything else he has written. See the book.
Already read The Long Walk? See our guide to books like The Long Walk. If 11/22/63 is the one for you, our Time Loops and Time Travel shelf has three more books that bend time. For more, browse our Horror shelf. See our shipping policy for current options and charges before you choose your next read.