A collection of four new long stories by Stephen King returns to a favorite theme, the divided soul. "FROM the start - even before a young man I can now hardly comprehend started writing 'The Long Walk' in his college dormitory room - I felt that the best fiction was both propulsive and assaultive," Stephen King writes in a chatty afterword to "Full Dark, No Stars," his new collection of longish stories. "It gets in your face." As if we didn't know. "Full Dark, No Stars" contains, as King's earlier "Different Seasons" and "Four Past Midnight" did, a quartet of previously unpublished tales that more than satisfy their prolific author's stated criteria for good fiction. Propulsive? Check. Assaultive? Don't ask. The stories in "Full Dark, No Stars," whose lengths range from 30-some pages to well over 100, are for the most part only lightly supernatural and deal, instead, with the unlovelier aspects of merely human behavior. Serial rape and murder figure prominently in two of these stories; in another, a man kills his wife and forces his teenage son to help him; and in the only fully fantastic tale here, a man purchases - from the Devil, of course - health and happiness at the too-affordable price of the ruin of his best friend's family. It's grim stuff, but that's what readers expect of Stephen King. After all, he's been in our faces for 40 years. What's amazing, and maybe a little unsettling, about King is the consistency of his purpose and his manner over that long stretch of time. He's essentially the same grab-you-by-the-lapels literary showman he was in the pulpy, punchy horror stories he used to peddle to men's magazines and, a bit later, in his early novels "Carrie" and "Salem's Lot." Unlike most writers, he seems never to have become bored with his own peculiar gifts - to have tired of the wonderful toys left under the tree for him when he was a kid. He might, as he claims, have a tough time imagining himself as an 18-year-old composing his first novel, but it's no problem for us, his readers, because King at 63 still writes with the verve and glee and heedless ease of a very young man. He has not mellowed perceptibly. He has not put aside childish things. When you're reading the grisly tales in "Full Dark, No Stars," carried along by his rollicking, vivid prose, you think (if you're thinking at all): "God help him, this man is having fun." A writer who takes such unabashed joy in the act of storytelling is a rarity. This naked pleasure is King's secret ingredient: it makes his work - good or bad - weirdly irresistible, even addictive. And it disarms criticism, as boyish enthusiasm often does. You might feel, as I do, that "Fair Extension," the deal-with-the-Devil story in "Full Dark, No Stars," is too glib and casual to bear the moral weight it aspires to, but it seems almost rude to say so. You might also think (as I do) that the long suspense story "Big Driver," about a woman who suffers and then violently avenges a roadside rape, is a bit too easy for King: there were a couple of similar escape-and-revenge yarns in bis 2008 collection "Just After Sunset." You could think that. But you wouldn't really feel good about it. King's compulsion to entertain - both himself and the enormous public whom he now, kind of archly, addresses as "Constant Reader" - is, however helpless, a form of generosity, a gift horse not to be looked in the mouth. (His readers should know by now that it's unwise to look into anything dark and moist. Especially if there are teeth.) The sheer volume of his output protects him some, too. In the vast ocean of King fiction, the weaker stuff just sinks from memory without a trace, and without much damage to the reader's confidence in him: a sturdier vessel is always heaving into view on the horizon. And that's the case with "Full Dark, No Stars," which starts with a good story called "1922," loses its way for a while - in "Big Driver" and "Fair Extension" - and then winds up with another pretty strong one, "A Good Marriage." The two better stories even have a sort of common theme: in both, people feel themselves, at moments of crisis, somehow doubled, split in two. Darcy Anderson, the heroine of "A Good Marriage," sometimes senses the presence of another self behind the mirror: a "Darker Girl" when she was young, and later a "Darker Wife," living what she calls "the Darker Life, where every truth was written backward." Whatever the reasons for her youthful mirror fantasies, she discovers ample justification for gloomy imaginings in the 28th year of her marriage, when she happens upon clues to the secret life of her husband, Bob, a dark stranger indeed. In Bob's shadow existence, away from her, he commits terrible crimes which he attributes to the presence of another person inside himself: the malign spirit of a dead childhood friend. (It's an extremely crowded marriage.) King works the double motifs deftly and guides the narrative to a satisfyingly cathartic climax - after which he supplies a nifty denouement in the form of a dialogue between poor shattered Darcy and a sly old retired cop. "A Good Marriage" is a characteristic King performance, speedy and craftsman-like and solidly unnerving. (It's characteristic, too, in the slight gender bias King has always, gallantly, displayed: in his work, men do violence because they're bad, and women do violence only in self-defense or retaliation.) "1922" is less typical, because it's set in a fairly distant past rather than in King's usual here and now, and in the rural Midwest rather than in his native New England, where the other stories in "Full Dark, No Stars" take place. It's also the only story here told in the first person. The change of air (and voice) suits him: "1922" has a mournful gravity that the other tales mostly lack, in part perhaps because its diction is free of the bursts of baby-talk slang that have become a nasty habit of his in recent years. (Elsewhere in the book, you're brought up short by painful coinages like "Easy-as-can-beezy" and "nuzzle-bunny.") The narrator of "1922," a Nebraska farmer named Wilfred James, murders his wife because she wants to sell off part of the family farm and move to the city. Wilfred tries to tell himself, as the serial killer of "A Good Marriage" does, that someone else is the author of this awful act: "I believe," he writes, a few years after the event, "that there is another man inside of every man, a stranger, a Conniving Man," and that it was this evil double who did the deed. He can't quite persuade himself, though: the stark memory of the crime is all his, and the dire consequences are visited not on the imaginary other, but on him - and on his son, whom he has made his accomplice. KING'S rambunctious fiction doesn't often attempt a tragic tone, but "1922" does, and nearly achieves it. Although he has toyed with the idea of doubles and split personalities before (notably in "The Shining" and "The Dark Half"), there's a particularly intimate sense of horror in "1922" because the sad story is told in the voice of one of the afflicted. Not much, I'd guess, truly scares Stephen King, but in this tale his prose feels haunted, as if he had, for once, spooked himself. For a hard-charging writer like King, the thought of another self inside the self is as disquieting a night-terror as can be imagined. He has been himself - confidently, propulsively, assaultively - for so long. It's too late to come face to face with the stranger inside. One disturbed character says, 'I believe that there is another man inside of every man, a stranger, a Conniving Man.' Terrence Rafferty is a frequent contributor to the Book Review.

Following an overstuffed feast of a novel (Under the Dome,2009), King returns with four comparative snacks, each of which deals in some way with the darkest recesses of the human soul.None of the narratives have previously been published, and all are apparently recent. The first, best and longest is "1922," a richly detailed ghost story about a Nebraska farmer whose wife wants to sell land she's inherited and move to the city, and how he enlists their 14-year-old son to conspire against her. He had been convinced that moving to the city would be hell, but discovers, as he tells himself, "You realize that you are in a hell of your own making, but you go on nevertheless. Because there is nothing else to do." "Big Driver" concerns an implausible plot against an author speaking to a book club, and the toll her revenge takes on her, transforming her into a different person in the process. "Fair Extension," the shortest, is a fable about a terminal cancer patient who experiences a miraculous remission following a transaction with the devilish Mr. Elvid. "A Good Marriage," is, of course, a title dripping with irony, with a wife of more than 25 years discovering devastating secretsa secret life! even a dual identity!about her boringly predictable husband. Can things somehow go on as they have before? Or does she risk ruining her own life and those of their children by exposing her husband? "Does anybody really know anybody?"asks the story (rhetorically). Explains King in his "Afterword," "From the start...I felt that the best fiction was both propulsive and assaultive. It gets in your face. Sometimes it shouts in your face."A collection of page-turning narratives for those who prefer the prolific tale spinner at his pulpiest.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* King begins his afterword by stating, The stories in this book are harsh. The man ain't whistlin' Dixie. Returning to the novella possibly his brightest canvas King provides four raw looks at the limits of greed, revenge, and self-deception. The first, 1922, is an outright masterpiece and takes the form of the written confession of one Wilf James. Back in 1922, see, Wilf killed his wife to prevent her selling off part of the farm, but tossing her corpse down the well didn't exactly stop her. It's Poe meets Creepshow by way of Steinbeck and carries the bleak, nearly romantic doom of an old folk ballad about murderin' done wrong. A pair of the remaining tales feature female protagonists considering hiding others' crimes: Big Driver is a rape-revenge tale about a writer of cozy mysteries who ends up in the uncoziest of situations, while A Good Marriage stars a wife whose husband of 27 years turns out to be hiding an unimaginable secret. Though the shortest story by far, Fair Extension is no slouch, submitting for your approval one Mr. Elvid (get it?), who is out to shine a little light on our blackest urges. Rarely has King gone this dark, but to say there are no stars here is crazy. High-Demand Backstory: King has gone on record saying he believesthat American readers should pay more attention to the virtues of short fiction; and if anyone can get reluctant short-story and novella readers into the swing, he certainly can with this book.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2010 Booklist

King leaves the supernatural behind to find the macabre in stories of ordinary misfortune. In each, ordinary people discover how their choices define who they are and what they can become. As usual, King's characters are multidimensional and colorful, if not necessarily sympathetic. Craig Wasson takes on two of the stories, and his raspy voice is a pleasure to listen to. The main characters in "1922" and "Fair Exchange" are not young men, and his mature gruffness and easy delivery are perfect. And while Jessica Hecht's reading of both "Big Driver" and "A Good Marriage" is pleasant and steady, her characterizations through dialogue are not very broad, and sometimes sound timid and whiny. Still, the strength of the stories keeps the listener enthralled. A Scribner hardcover. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

King, a modern master of short fiction, offers four disturbing but unforgettable novellas that explore our capacity for retribution. Narrators Craig Wasson and Jessica Hecht bring these psychological chillers to life. (LJ 3/15/11) (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.