You really have to go for the full creep-out when you're illustrating Stephen King's stories. And Full Dark, No Stars, a new collection of King novellas from Cemetery Dance Publications, has the goods. Check out a few of our favorites.
According to Cemetery Dance:
Cemetery Dance Publications is very pleased to announce our Deluxe Special Edition of Stephen King's chilling new collection of novellas. The tales in Full Dark, No Stars are bleak, featuring some of the darkest moments of any King work in recent memory, and we've brought together a team of five acclaimed artists to create sixteen original, exclusive illustrations including black & white pieces and glossy color tip-ins.
The collection goes on sale at the end of the year, but the Lettered Edition and Limited Edition already sold out, in two hours and 12 hours respectively. The Gift Edition has a low print run as well, so it may not last long either.
Here are some details on the stories in the book:
"I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger . . ." writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up "1922," the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King.
For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness.
In "Big Driver," a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself.
"Fair Extension," the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment.
When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband. It's a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends "A Good Marriage."
More details at the link. [Cemetery Dance]
This art, featuring the incredibly disturbing scoutmaster, comes from Vincent Chong, illustrating "A Good Marriage."
Here's the gorgeous cover to the lettered edition.
Scary eye dice! "Fair Extension," illustrated by Alan M. Clark.
"Big Driver," illustrated by Jill Bauman