If It Bleeds: Mr. Harrigan's Phone, the Life of Chuck, Rat

*#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*

Includes "Mr. Harrigan's Phone"--now a Netflix original film starring Donald Sutherland and Jaeden Martell!

From the legendary storyteller and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary collection of four new "exceptionally compelling novellas that reaffirm [King's] mastery of the form" (The Washington Post).

Readers adore Stephen King's novels, and his novellas are their own dark treat, briefer but just as impactful and enduring as his longer fiction. Many of his novellas have been made into iconic films, including "The Body" (Stand by Me) and "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" (Shawshank Redemption).

The four brilliant tales in If It Bleeds prove as iconic as their predecessors. In the title story, reader favorite Holly Gibney (from the Mr. Mercedes trilogy and The Outsider) must face her fears, and possibly another outsider--this time on her own. In "Mr. Harrigan's Phone" an intergenerational friendship has a disturbing afterlife. "The Life of Chuck" explores, beautifully, how each of us contains multitudes. And in "Rat," a struggling writer must contend with the darker side of ambition.

If these novellas show King's range, they also prove that certain themes endure. One of King's great concerns is evil, and in If It Bleeds, there's plenty of it. There is also evil's opposite, which in King's fiction often manifests as friendship. Holly is reminded that friendship is not only life-affirming but can be life-saving. Young Craig befriends Mr. Harrigan, and the sweetness of this late-in-life connection is its own reward.

"An adroit vehicle to showcase the...nature of evil" (The Boston Globe), If It Bleeds is "exactly what I wanted to read right now," says Ruth Franklin in The New York Times Book Review.

Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Published: 04/21/2020
Pages: 448
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.6lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.40w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9781982137977

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 5.6
Point Value: 21
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 510492 / If It Bleeds


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 12/01/2019 pg. 56
Publishers Weekly 03/09/2020
Booklist 03/15/2020 pg. 43
Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2020 pg. 19
Library Journal 05/01/2020 pg. 98

About the Author
Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.