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    Skeleton Crew: Stories
    Skeleton Crew: Stories
    Skeleton Crew: Stories
    Audiobook22 hours

    Skeleton Crew: Stories

    Written by Stephen King

    Narrated by Stephen King, Dylan Baker, Kyle Beltran and

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Includes the stories “Uncle Otto’s Truck” and “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut”—set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine

    Features “The Mist” now a TV series event on Spike

    The #1 New York Times bestseller and winner of the 1986 Locus Award for Best Collection, Skeleton Crew is “Stephen King at his best” (The Denver Post)—a terrifying, mesmerizing collection of stories from the outer limits of one of the greatest imaginations of our time.

    “Wildly imaginative, delightfully diabolical…King once again proves to be the consummate storyteller” (The Associated Press).

    A supermarket becomes the place where humanity makes its last stand against destruction. A trip to the attic becomes a journey to hell. A woman driving a Jaguar finds a scary shortcut to paradise. An idyllic lake harbors a bottomless evil. And a desert island is the scene of the most terrifying struggle for survival ever waged. This “wonderfully gruesome” collection (The New York Times Book Review) includes:

    -“The Mist”
    -“Here There Be Tygers”
    -“The Monkey”
    -“Cain Rose Up”
    -“Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut”
    -“The Jaunt”
    -“The Wedding Gig”
    -“Paranoid: A Chant”
    -“The Raft”- “Word Processor of the Gods”
    -“The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands”
    -“Beachworld”
    -“The Reaper’s Image”
    -“Nona”
    -“For Owen”
    -“Survivor Type”
    -“Uncle Otto’s Truck”
    -“Morning Deliveries (Milkman No. 1)”
    -“Big Wheels: a Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkman No. 2)”
    -“Gramma”
    -“The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet”
    -“The Reach”

    King is best known for his iconic, immersive long novels, but he is also a master of the short story, and this is a magnificent collection.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJul 5, 2016
    ISBN9781508218401
    Skeleton Crew: Stories
    Author

    Stephen King

    Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes the short story collection You Like It Darker, Holly, 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. 

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    Reviews for Skeleton Crew

    4/5

    2,086 ratings40 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I love is book really good to reading is I read again
    • 5/5
      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      I found this info on another audiobook site.

      The Mist- Will Patton (consists of chapters 1-11, since it's a long novella)
      Here There Be Tygers – Kyle Beltran
      The Monkey – Matthew Broderick
      Cain Rose Up – Kyle Beltran
      Mrs Todd’s Shortut – Dana Ivey
      The Jaunt - Robert Petkoff
      The Wedding Gig – Paul Giamatti
      Paranoid: a Chant – Will Patton
      The Raft – Stephen King
      Word Processor of the Gods – Norbert Leo Butz
      The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands - Paul Giamatti
      Beach World – Michael C Hall
      The Reapers Image – David Morse
      Nona - Norbert Leo Butz
      For Owen – David Morse
      Survivor Type - Norbert Leo Butz
      Uncle Otto’s Truck – David Morse
      Morning Deliveries, Milkman # 1 – Dylan Baker
      Big Wheels: Tales of the Laundry Game : Milkman # 2 – Dylan Baker
      Gramma – Frances Sternhagen
      The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet – Michael C Hall
      The Reach – Lois Smith
    • 4/5
      Contains the novella The Mist which is my favourite Stephen King story of all time!
    • 5/5
      Love books like this one ‘ wish there were more like
    • 4/5
      The more Stephen King, the more I like his writing. I get the idea some people think he's a crappy bestseller along with all the rest, but hey -- sometimes you shouldn't be snobby. His stuff is easy to read and it deals with real emotions, people who could almost be real, in incredible situations. I get the feeling I've said this all before, so, um. Anyway, it's good to read his short stories. Short stories are quite condensed little things, and in King's case, that's a good thing. None of the lengthy set up he allows himself in his novels, like It and The Stand. "The Mist" is quite long and has quite a bit of set up, but a lot of the others are quite short. It was interesting seeing him do more sci-fi ish stuff, i.e. "The Jaunt".
    • 5/5
      I’m a sucker for Steve. While this is not my favorite collection of his short stories, there are enough great ones here (and truly exquisite narrators) to make this worth your while.
    • 4/5
      Most of the stories in this collection were great. 'The Mist' is the obvious standout, but other stories of equal measure include 'The jaunt', 'The Raft', and 'The Raft', among others.

      Highly recommended if you're looking for a good dose of horror, science fiction, and just regular human drama.
    • 3/5
      I thought that I was getting the full book instead of selections when I picked this up. I was looking to read The Mist which isn't actually on this one. I did like the selections, but I'll be going back for the full book soon. I would say these shorts are creepy mind-fucks.
    • 4/5
      This collection of stories (including one longish novella, "The Mist") was first published in 1986, although some of the individual stories are significantly older.As with most story collections, the quality here is a little variable, but I think the least interesting or well-written ones are mostly also the shortest ones, so that works out well enough. And overall, it's a pretty solid collection. I'm not sure if any of the pieces quite rise to the extreme heights of creepiness or sensitive storytelling that King is capable of at his very best, but some of them might come close, and most of them are at the very least engaging and do basically what you want a Stephen King story to do for you. And I'm actually pretty impressed by the way in which he repeatedly takes basic ideas that were hardly fresh and new in 1986 -- people trapped somewhere isolated by monsters, a creepy doll that reappears when you try to get rid of it, a murderous companion who turns out to be all in the main character's head -- and somehow makes you forget for the course of the story just how cliche they might be.Although I do have to say, while these tales in some respects don't feel particularly dated at all, in others they feel like dispatches from a strange and uncomfortable past world, a world in which things like drunk driving, domestic abuse, and casual racism were much more easily accepted, or at least tolerated and ignored. And so was the practice of writing female characters who are nothing more than ugly or annoying stereotypes cut from the flimsiest variety of cardboard. Alas.And "The Mist," I'd say, has aged weirdly in an entirely different way as well. In King's notes, he describes that story as having a deliberate sort of cheesiness to it, and imagines the reader watching it in black-and-white at a drive-in theater. But I think reading it through two layers of nostalgic remove -- 50s B-movies filtered through 80s Stephen King as viewed from the perspective of 2020 -- makes it feel stranger, cheesier, and more off-kilter than it was probably meant to. That being said, though, it's still one of those stories that does a surprisingly good job with an old-fashioned trapped-by-monsters plot. It also gave me a mildly unpleasant dream a couple of days after I read it, and it's a very rare horror story, indeed, that I can say that about.Rating: Despite its flaws, I'm going to give this a 4/5, if only in honor of the fact that it did kinda-sorta manage to give me a nightmare. I mean, that's got to deserve some kind of recognition.
    • 5/5
      Storygalore! I really love the Jaunt, it is short but it packs as wallop!
    • 5/5
      Stephen King outdid himself with this compilation of stories. The Mist, The Raft, and Mrs. Todd's Shortcut had me riveted. Word Processor of the Gods creates the type of power we all wish we could have at times. (added things to life or deleted them from existence). Beach World and The Jaunt were probably my least favorite, but that doesn't mean they weren't good.
    • 4/5
      An above average collection of stories. The good stuff is superb, and the few low points are forgettable or forgivable. The capping story, "The Reach," reminds me of one of Wendell Berry's Port William stories with a hint of Gothic ghost story flair. It's really touching. The two that really stuck with me, though: "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet," the best King story-within-a-story, and one of his very early "The Reaper's Image," which reminds me of something from M.R. James.
    • 4/5
      I'm a huge Stephen King fan... but....
      while I very much enjoyed some of these stories (The Raft, The Jaunt, The Mist).. others didn't seem up to par.
    • 5/5
      Classic King in all his glory. Contains one of his finest short works, in addition to many others.
    • 2/5
      Do you love?

      Not his best anthology of short-stories/novellas (Different Seasons), but I like this nevertheless. A few highlights:

      The Mist
      The Monkey
      The Raft
      Word Processor of the Gods
      Gramma
      The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet

      These stories were good and creepy. The others...not so good.
    • 5/5
      I'll be the first to admit that I'm far more prone to picking up a full-length novel I can sink my teeth into until page 651 and then wish for more, while usually bypassing most short story collections entirely. However, King doesn't seem to be able to write a single dud and his short stories are just as fascinating and intriguing as his long novels. This book was no exception and I absolutely loved it. My favorites were probably The Mist, The Jaunt, The Raft (this one people who have seen Creepshow 2 will probably recognize because it showed up as one of the short stories in that movie, but I found it to be absolutely fascinating to read it via the POV of a single character and being able to use my imagination was even better than seeing it play out in color on TV, not to mention that the differences in the story compared to the Creepshow version were neat to pick out), and Milkman #1 and #2. All of them were great, so it was difficult to pick just these out and I don't think it'd be possible to pick out just one as my top fave out of this collection. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is a fan of Stephen King, horror and the macabre.
    • 4/5
      Part of my "ripping yarns" summer reading! The Mist is great, perhaps a bit long.
    • 5/5
      "Use it, but don't abuse it.""I will and I won't."These quotes are from the short story "Cain Rose Up". I've been saying them, or a version of them ever since I first read this collection, way back when it came out in 1985. How can it be that long ago? Ah well, I love this book, especially as it contains my all time favorite short story of Stephen King's, "Survivor Type"! It's also nostalgic for me, as it also contains the first King short story I ever read, "Nona", from a different collection I found in an old paperback book in our family cabin in Tahoe. And it inspired my fear of wind-up monkeys. Memories...Other quotes I love from this book:"Good drink, good meat, good God, let's eat!" - Garrish from "Cain Rose Up""lady fingers they taste just like lady fingers"- "Survivor Type" "Ohhh, Ceesco!""Ohhhh Pancho!" - "The Raft" "Do you love?" - "Nona" "The Raft" and "The Reach"If I've made any errors in documenting these quotes, blame it on the Fornit in my keyboard...
    • 3/5
      A mixed bag, both in genre and quality.There are two shockingly bad, but mercifully brief, poems. Tellingly, they hadn't been published previously.Two embarrassingly bad science fiction stories. The central idea of The Jaunt is good but the execution is poor. Beachworld is amateurish in conception and execution.Some, like the Milkman stories are just BORING.But there are some good ones. The Reach is very nicely written. The sort of thing you'd half wish weren't technically horror, if the ghost story genre weren't so respectable. Word Processor of the Gods is fun, as is The Raft. The best is The Mist I think. More of a short novel than a short story (I love both but King generally excels at the former than the latter), and very dark. Here even religion leads to madness and death
    • 3/5
      Four novellas in one, each a little different and creepy. Ably narrated, each...stories range from visceral and gruesome to slow and ponderous. The short stories are a bit difficult to follow if you only listen occasionally--probably better if you do each one all at once. The author crams a lot of detail into each story.
    • 3/5
      Just reading The Mist for now.
    • 4/5
      Not all the short stories in thsi collection are winners, but collectively they are quite unnerving.
    • 5/5
      Skeleton Crew is still my overall favorite of Stephen King's short story collections. Several of the stories have been used in film and television (in forms that I actually enjoyed!) and I think that overall he does a good job of maintaining an aura of suspense throughout the collection instead of from story to story. The collection actually starts off with a novella, The Mist, that I used an excerpt from during high school for a competitive forensics dramatic reading that I scored very well with throughout the season and received the highest marks available at the state tournament.Some of my favorites from the collection include: The Mist (most people hated the film, I didn't think that it was really THAT bad), The Monkey (one of King's creepiest short stories), The Raft, and Gramma (also my favorite episode from the attempted revival of The Twilight Zone.)Overall, Skeleton Crew is a very solid collection of creepy tales and I thoroughly enjoyed it the second time around.
    • 4/5
      Reading this so soon after his first anthology, Night Shift, I found Skeleton Crew a disappointment. With his first collection, I only found one story to be really weak and several outstanding. While I wouldn't exactly say this book was the reverse, I only felt about seven stories worth the read. The first story is a short novel of 154 pages that takes up more than a quarter of the book. The Mist deals with a few dozen people trapped in a supermarket by monsters hidden by a mysterious mist. The narrator, David Drayton, himself calls the creatures from a "B-grade film" and that's how the story struck me overall, without the resonance and terror of King's best novels. About two-thirds through, I found myself skimming. There are two poems in the book, neither of which I found impressive--but then I'm no fan of modern poetry. That leaves a 18 short stories and a novella, The Flexible Bullet. That novella alone is almost worth the price of the book. One of the best of King's works in my opinion at any length, written in a masterful omniscient point of view, it's a spooky little tale of the writer's muse, and its closeness to madness. A few of the shorts stand out number standout for how they irked me: "The Jaunt," a rather lame science-fiction effort, is only amusing for its bad stab at prognostication. It has us having almost run out of fossil fuel in 1987, with thousands of people having died in the United States for the lack of heating oil the year before. "The Wedding Gig" comes across as an overextended fat joke, with the wonderful line that, unlike race, one shouldn't feel sorry for those with a weight problem because, "Fat people can always stop eating." (Spoken like a man who never had much of a weight problem. King treated cigarette smoking with a lot more sympathy in the short "Quitters, Inc" in Night Shift.) The obese woman's coffin is described as a "meat locker." Three of the shorts were written when King was just a teen--and it shows--none of those are memorable. "The Monkey" "The Raft" and "Gramma" are vintage King, and delivered up a good dose of horror and suspense. "The Word Processor of the Gods," despite touches of horror, was unusual for leaving me with a smile--rather sunny for a King story. "Survivor Type" on the other hand, was gruesome even for a King story--but I can't say it wasn't memorable. As a collection, I don't think this was as strong as Night Shift, but it certainly contained some unforgettable stories equal--or more--to the best in that book.
    • 4/5
      One of my favorite King books. My favorite two stories were "The Mist," and "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut." The movie version of "The Mist" actually looked alot like I pictured the story in my head. And the story that freaked me out the most was "Survivor Type." I don't think I'd quite go to those lengths to survive! Very chilling and very original.
    • 4/5
      A decent collection of Stephen King's short stories with fantastic "The Mist" - I love this short story and a recent movie inspired by this novella. Other stories worth mentioning are "The Jaunt" - a thrilling little science fiction, "The raft" - King has definitely a gift of making a mundane into dangerous. "The survivor" is definitely memorable and Gramma made me chuckle. In summary - a worthy read.
    • 5/5
      I enjoy Stephen King's earlier short stories the most, and this is probably my favorite collection. It opens with "The Mist," an excellent end-of-the-world story in which Lovecraftian monsters cross over into our dimension. The psychological suspense is as ramped up as the horror; King focuses on a group of ordinary people trapped in a grocery store and the effects that the nightmarish situation has on them, turning some into religious fanatics, others into unlikely heroes. Despite the doorstopper nature of many of King's books (and I really do enjoy the big books), I think most of his best work is in the more contained novella format.The remainder of the stories run the gamut. Some are creepy, some read like an episode of the Twilight Zone, and some are just full-on gross-outs. This collection contains the infamous story "Survivor Type," as well as such gems as "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" and "The Raft." I particularly enjoyed the creepier, more haunting pieces like "Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1)" and "The Reach." One of the most memorable stories in the collection for me is "The Jaunt," a quasi-science fiction story about teleportation that I often find myself thinking about at odd moments.It's good to get this collection down off the shelf and wander back through it, looking back on stories I may not have read for 25 years (imagine that). SKELETON CREW holds up very well.
    • 5/5
      Skeleton Crew is another great collection of short stories by horror master Stephen King. Every original story is premised on ideas that would scare the pants off any child: from freaky death monkey toys to witch possessed grandmas to flesh-consuming oil spills. The overall atmosphere of unbridged terror is, of course, executed to perfection by King.
    • 4/5
      A great collection of stories. Mr. King has many classics, and this is no exception. He doesn't get much better with his short stories.
    • 4/5
      I honestly Love Stephen Kings short stories. The man really knows how to scare you. This book is a collection of some pretty twisted short stories of his. You'll be suprised but just what stories are inside this cover. I had no idea some of his most famous movies were based off of some short stories of his. This was an absolutly great read.