A thrilling collection of 21 stories - some brand new, some published in magazines, all entirely brilliant and assembled in one collection for the first time - with a wonderful bonus: in addition to his introduction to the whole collection, King gives listeners a fascinating introduction to each story with autobiographical comments on their origins and motivations.

The number one best-selling writer has dazzled listeners with his genius as a writer of novellas and short story fiction since his first collection Night Shift was published. He describes the nature of the form in his introduction to the work: 'There's something to be said for a shorter, more intense experience. It can be invigorating, sometimes even shocking, like...a beautiful curio for sale laid out on a cheap blanket at a street bazaar.'

In The Bazaar of Bad Dreams there is a curio for every reader - a man who keeps reliving the same life, repeating the same mistakes over and over again, a columnist who kills people by writing their obituaries, a poignant tale about the end of the human race and a firework competition between neighbours which reaches an explosive climax. There are also intriguing connections between the stories; themes of morality, guilt, the afterlife and what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past. Effervescent yet poignant, juxtaposing the everyday against the unexpected, these stories comprise one of King's finest gifts to his constant listener as well as to those fascinated by the autobiographical insights in his celebrated nonfiction title On Writing. 'I made them especially for you,' says King. 'Feel free to examine them, but please be carefuly. The best of them have teeth.'

'Introduction' read by Stephen King
'Mile 81' read by Thomas Sadoksi
'Premium Harmony' read by Will Patton
'Batman and Robin Have an Altercation' read by Santino Fontana
'The Dune' read by Edward Herrmann
'Bad Little Kid' read by Dylan Baker
'A Death' read by Cotter Smith
'The Bone Church' read by Cotter Smith
'Morality' read by Mare Winningham
'Afterlife' read by Dylan Baker
'Ur' read by Holter Graham
'Herman Wouk Is Still Alive' read by Brooke Bloom and Kathleen Chalfant
'Under the Weather' read by Peter Friedman
'Blockade Billy' read by Craig Wasson
'Mister Yummy' read by Peter Friedman
'Tommy' read by Stephen King
'The Little Green God of Agony' read by Hope Davis
'Cookie Jar' read by Santino Fontana
'That Bus Is Another World' read by Fred Weller
'Obits' read by Fred Weller
'Drunken Fireworks' read by Tim Sample
'Summer Thunder' read by Will Patton

Listening Length

20 hours and 11 minutes
Author

Stephen King
Narrator

Stephen King, see all
Audible release date

3 November 2015
Language

English
Publisher

Hodder & Stoughton
ASIN

B016YNMIJW
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	20 hours and 11 minutes
Author	Stephen King
Narrator	Stephen King, Dylan Baker, Brooke Bloom, Kathleen Chalfant, Hope Davis, Santino Fontana, Peter Friedman
Audible.com.au Release Date	03 November 2015
Publisher	Hodder & Stoughton
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B016YNMIJW
Best Sellers Rank	9,662 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 1 in Thriller & Suspense Anthologies & Short Stories 7 in Horror Anthologies & Short Stories 18 in Horror Anthologies

Customer reviews

5 star		74%
4 star		17%
3 star		6%
2 star		2%
1 star		2%

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N. Hill

Great collection

Reviewed in Australia on 17 November 2019

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Great collection, the most haunting of which is Summer Thunder. I come back to this short, sad, and all-too-real story time and time again and the melancholy is powerful.

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Gail

Something different.

Reviewed in Australia on 6 March 2016

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I couldn't really get in to as much as I normally do when I read stories by Stephen King, maybe because it was made up of short stories. Some stories were a better read than others and I still got that chill with some of them.

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Doreen MacBride

Five Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 1 December 2015

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Outstanding. Mr King does it again, can't wait for his next one. Hope it won't be too long.

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Nancee

Still crazy after all these years...

Reviewed in Australia on 26 November 2015

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I love Mr King, and enjoyed these stories very much. Not my favourite collection of his, but still excellent.

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Amazon Customer

Not one of his best

Reviewed in Australia on 18 April 2016

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Readable, however in my opinion not one of his best

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Harris

Five Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 27 November 2015

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Stephen King at his best

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Danni L

It was brilliant to get a glimpse of the stories that eventually ...

Reviewed in Australia on 22 July 2018

There are twenty short stories in this collection which will dazzle, daunt, and dare you to turn out the light. There were times I was sure I knew the ending only to have Mr King twist the story on its head. It was brilliant to get a glimpse of the stories that eventually became novels, and others made me grateful they ended when they did.

One of my favourites was Dune - An old judge is organising his will. He tells his lawyer about a magic sand dune on a small island he’s known about since childhood, something he’s kept secret all this time. In the sand he sees the names of people who are about to die. This was one of the few times I managed to guess the ending, but it didn’t make it any less chilling or exciting.

Batman and Robin have an Altercation, however, broke my heart. It tells of a son taking his senile father out for lunch. While their relationship isn’t the best and his son takes his father out as a sense of duty than any sense of love – he’s spent years playing second best to his older brother, now deceased, and never measuring up in his father’s eyes - there is still something to their relationship that made me think of the changing shifts of power. Their roles have reversed. The son cuts up his father’s food, helps him go to the bathroom, and cares for him, and the father goes in and out of mental stability (and time periods) as he tries to comprehend the world around him. On the drive home, they’re caught up in a serious issue of road rage, and that’s when the father steps up and reclaims his role of protector. Seconds later, his mind is far away once more. It made me think of my mother and how we are now caring for her. Her mind is not always with us, and she lingers longer in that time when she was young, a time before her children even exist. While the relationship in the story is nothing like the one I have with my mum, it certainly made me see this story from a deeper perspective.

What I enjoyed the most from Bad Dreams was Mr King’s anecdotes at the beginning of each story. The insight into his thoughts and the events that inspired his stories was brilliant. How something so mundane and everyday could be twisted and warped into something so vivid and thought provoking, and has one looking over their shoulders at times is fantastic. I still feel the magic of Mr King’s stories now as I did when I was fourteen. But I think I was braver then.

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A Review (and a Lesson on Tag Lines)

Reviewed in Australia on 17 December 2015

This collection of short stories is a hodgepodge and I mean that it in the best way. A few you may have read before, there are new ones you will love, and others will cause you to declare, "Meh". That is why I love such collections. Variety is the spice of life. And speaking of life, we get a glimpse of King's before each tale. The prolific-one provides catalyst, context, and writing tips for each story. What struck me was the amazing life of the man himself. There were the struggles to achieve success and corresponding concerns about making money and providing for his family. The Big "A" or alcoholism that he faced and faced down. The incredible accident that required years of physical (and I am sure, mental) rehabilitation. These facts of his life make him a more appealing character (if I can put it that way).

As my admiration of the man grew so did my enjoyment of the stories I had read before (I got more out of some a second time around), the ones I loved (they just hit it), and even the "Meh" ones deserve respect (because writing is no easy task). Mile 81 and Blockade Billy are examples of those previously consumed and the latter came across especially strong. Bad Little Kid was early King creepy (no one inserts the malevolent into human form better). Mister Yummy, Obits and Summer Thunder stood out as both melancholy and horrific which is a fine balance. Ur and Drunken Fireworks were misfires. Ur because it actually felt like an ad for the Amazon Kindle. Listen carefully to King's introduction of Ur that attempts to defend his endorsement of a product and company. Fireworks was a tad too trite without any edge. To sum up, in the aggregate, the collection is great entertainment made more colourful by the slices of author life sandwiched between the tales.

Lastly, an off-topic point about tag lines. In one story, That Bus Is Another World, we are introduced to a gent pitching an ad or branding or pr campaign for an oil company that has done the environment wrong (think BP). His pitch for a tag line for the campaign is "Energy and Beauty Can Go Hand in Hand. Give Us Three Years to Prove It." There are many copywriters who want to be novelists and here King shows he may want to be a copywriter. Yet, such a tag line would be immediately lampooned by environmentalists and other stakeholders who would take it, twist it to say, 'We should give you 30 years in jail" or the like. You gotta stand or something or fall for anything, as they say. Yet, marketing messages are criticized and abused when too specific or too vague. Still, could you imagine if King had made his career on Madison Avenue? That would have been really spooky.

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Charlotte C.

Disappointing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 January 2022

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I've read quite a bit of King, including at least one other short story collection. This is the first 'modern' King I've read (as in, from the current century) & I found it underwhelming. I skipped by three stories as they didn't interest me. The others were fine, but not amazing or thought-provoking.

Something that bothered me was the first story, based on modern day children and seen partially through the eyes of a ten year old, yet told very firmly in King's old-fashioned kids voice. The slang used, the knowledge, the names - they're not right. Find me a kid named Normie in 2022 and I'll give you a shiny penny. The names are outdated and the way the kid thinks is outdated. If kids have gangs nowadays, they don't have names like 'The Raiders' or whatever they were called. If this story was set in, perhaps, the 1950s - it would be fine and I'd think nothing of it, but I didn't enjoy the dissonance. With all this said, I do believe the first story was the best in terms of storyline (followed by the last story).

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Ali

"It wasn't my name written on The Dune......"

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 October 2016

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The prolific Stephen King’s latest is a feast of short stories and novellas that indicate that what we see as reality is far from benign; and can induce nightmares.

Having been a reader of King since my teenage years, I have found that his Novellas and Short Stories to be particularly unsettling. This new collection contains some of his darkest tales, often with a spin on morality and social norms. They also allow us to peep into one of King’s themes; that our reality may coexist with others, in terms of shared dimensions.

As this is a collection by the King of Horror, these dimensions that impinge upon our own; contain horrors that we have difficulty comprehending, like ‘Mile 81’ where a dangerous vehicle stalks an abandoned freeway rest-area [aka ‘Motorway Services’], or the evil child in ‘The Bad Kid’, who causes death and mayhem to whom he stalks; even right up to the final walk of a death row prisoner.

It contains some new work, though a significant proportion of the stories here have been available previously; but King has updated them for this collection [as he indicates in his introduction].

I would make specific mention of the surreal ‘Ur’ which was first published when the eBook / Kindle boom gathered momentum. Though one should remember that King was an early pioneer of the ebook, with his first forays being ‘The Plant’ [which remains uncompleted], and ‘Riding the Bullet’. ‘Ur’ features a college professor whose strange eReader is one that contains work by established and famous writers, now deceased – but the works within the eReader are from a different dimension, or are they?

There is also pathos blended in with the horror, such as in ‘Batman and Robin have an Altercation’, which has the theme of the ravages of age upon a Son and his elderly Father whose mental faculties are dimmed, but not totally gone.

The short introductions by King where he prefaces the stories add welcome insight, showing the story in context as well as inception.

Specific favourites are the very droll ‘Drunken Fireworks’, which started life as an audio novella, and is indeed a very engaging morality tale that when placed into context, mirrors the inherent madness in humanity’s need for the arms race. Though my favourite is the dark reflection of age and the mysteries of death in ‘The Dune’ [originally published as a story in the British literary journal Granta].

I subsequently purchased the audio version of this collection from Audible, which is remarkable, as King prefaces the stories vocally, but each is narrated by professional actors and vocal artists, such as Craig Wasson; and these narrations brings the stories to life [and death].

It is of little surprise that this collection was recognised by The Mystery Writers of America [MWA], with the story ‘Obits’ gaining an Edgar Award.

Highly recommended, and as a paperback or audiobook, these tales will unsettle as well as entertain in equal measure, with the promise of the Bad Dreams as alluded to by the title.

Ali Karim
Assistant Editor
Shots Magazine
[...]

17 people found this helpful

Miss K. Southern

it took me a LONG time to do so and while I did enjoy it, I didn't feel as fully invested in ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 January 2018

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When I first began my blog, almost three years ago now, Stephen King's 'It' was one of the books that I chose to read because I'd started it and wanted to finish. Sitting at 1000 pages plus, it took me a LONG time to do so and while I did enjoy it, I didn't feel as fully invested in it as I have done in other books of the same length (Martin's 'A Song Of Ice & Fire' series for example). This was a real shame as Horror is one of my favourite genres, I had really liked the film, and King is supposed to be a master of scares and the 'creep factor'. It's taken me a long time to get back to this guy as I really want to give him another chance to win me over. I chose 'The Bazaar Of Bad Dreams' because I thought maybe some of his shorter stories would win me over.

Firstly, let me say that these stories are still quite long. Some of them even have mini chapters. I didn't necessarily see this is as a bad thing but it reconfirmed my idea that this book was a much better idea than ploughing into one of his full length novels again (though classics like 'The Shining' and 'Christine' are definitely beckoning to me). King's writing is exquisitely detailed and in this format, that reflected on him a lot better than it would have done had the book been so long. I really loved the variation within the stories here too: there's something for everyone though all contain elements of the horrifying, be it supernatural or not. Particular favourites of mine include 'Obits' which obviously won the 2016 Edgar Award for a good reason, 'Summer Thunder' which allowed a small glimpse into a post-apocalyptic world filled with radiation poisoning, quiet and tragic memories, and 'Ur' which made me VERY curious to read King's 'Dark Tower' series. 'Bad Little Kid' was also great, giving me fond memories of the things I had enjoyed about 'It' in a condensed form.

One of the things that I probably found most frustrating was King's penchant for ambiguous endings. He says himself that he has a soft spot for them and while they did work for the stories, they also left me feeling liken I'd missed out on something important. Stories such as 'That Bus Is Another World', 'A Death' and 'The Little Green God Of Agony' particularly made me feel this way. King, for the most part, likes to stick with what he knows as well. Most of the stories are set in a shady, grubby Maine and while it meant that he knew the place well, I would have loved some more variety in the settings. A lot of the characters felt the same too in the way that they spoke and thought about things so it didn't give much variety as a whole. This is a great collection of stories other wise and I am definitely willing to have another go at one of King's other novels in the future.

4 people found this helpful

S J Buck

Its King and its good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 September 2016

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This is probably 4.5 stars for me. It has a different feel to many of Stephen King's other volumes of short stories. There is less out and out horror and more; I'm not sure how to best describe it, drama maybe. The interesting introductions to each story give you an insight into King's thinking. For example "Premium Harmony" a ten page short, was written by King after he had a read a lot of Raymond Carver. I think this is a trait that has been developing for many decades; going right back to Different Seasons. He seems to visit more mainstream subject matter now than he used to.

Fear not though, there is certainly horror here, but some of the time it's mixed with pathos and sadness, such as the 17 page "Herman Wouk Is Still Alive". This is a horrific story, inspired by real events, but the nature of the 2 sets of characters involved takes it beyond being just a short horror story. Well in my view anyway!

As with all of King's writing it's his imagination that takes your breath away, and this group of stories is no different in that regard. The variety of the material and the ideas are simply amazing. I don't know how he does it. The title of this volume is perhaps a reference to himself, as I'm sure I've read that if King stops writing he starts having bad dreams.

3 people found this helpful

G. Tones

It’s older and wiser SK - but the same author, through and through.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 October 2018

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I bought the Kindle edition of a few of Stephen King’s books over the last week because I’ve read all the books on my shelves and my husband hasn’t done as I’ve asked and gone into the loft to get the many boxes of books I shoved up there five years ago, many of which I will have forgotten I own. I like this book because it is recent SK, and I like that he gives notes prior to each story, because if I can’t read short notes provided by a hugely successful author, who the hell do I think I am?
Horror and gore are present, as are King’s usual themes: life, death, happiness, the unexplained, ridiculous unworldly happenings that are somehow made real in the imagination. I wondered if age has mellowed him somewhat, and I think it maybe has to some extent, but SK still doesn’t shy away from calling a zombie spade a zombie spade. This collection is one of an author who shares his success but still recognised his limitations, and he himself writes that writing is always a learning curve, however successful you are at doing it. And not every short story can be loved by everybody, right?
I remember reading Night Shift for the first time. If there is anyone out there who hasn’t read King’s short story collections before, I would urge you to begin with that particular one. In fact, I know for a fact that my thumbed and moth-eared copy is still in the loft, waiting for my husband to bring it down.
I might be too scared to go up there myself.

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