Rating: 
Summary: Great book!
Review: Riding the Bullet was a great book. It was exciting from the beginning to the end. There was never a time where I was bored or when the book was dull. It got right to the action and it was "short but sweet". It was about a man who gets a phone call saying that his mother had a stroke and is in the hopital. Even though he is told it is nothing serious, the man is very worried because his mother is an overweight smoker who is in her mid fifties. The hospital is 100 miles away and his car does not work. He decides to hitch a ride. An old man picks him up. he drives him about halfway there and drops him off near a graveyard. The man begins to walk through the graveyard. As he is doing this, he is also thinking about his mother, and all the things she used to say. One of her favorite sayings was "Fun is fun and done is done". The man looks at a tombstone. It says someone's name, and the date that he died. Underneath of that it said "Fun is fun, and done is done". The man is startled and falls backward. He gets up and then finds a ride with a young man about his age. The man has a button on his shirt that says " I rode The Bullet at Thrill Village." There is something strange about the man. It smells like chemicals in his car, and there is a huge scar going all around his neck. The man soon finds out that the man giving him a ride is dead. The dead man locks the car doors and speeds up. He starts questioning the man. The dead man knows all about the other man and his mother. He knows that she is sick and in the hospital. When the man asks the dead man who he is, the dead man replies, " I am like a messenger, except my job is worse than that of an angel." The dead man tells the other man that he must decide between his mother and him. Whichever one the man chose would live, and the other one would die. The man struggled to think but in the end he said "Take her. Take my mother. Spare me." The dead man reached back and touched the other man's chest. He then pushed him out of the car. When the man woke up he was back in the graveyard. He figured it was just a dream, but then he looked down at his chest and saw a button; the same button that the dead man was wearing. The dead man pinned it on his shirt just before he threw him out of the car. The man is scared and he hitches a ride to the hospital. As he walks in he doesn't know what to think; "Is she alive? Is she dead?" You'll have to read the book to find out how it ends. This was a great book and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes exciting horror books. If you like authors like Stephen King or R.L. Stine then you will love this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Yes...it WAS free...
Review: Stephen King published this book online some time ago with a "Please pay if you enjoy" proviso. As you can imagine, not a lucrative venture on his part. Over all, this story is pretty weak. It's just a lashing out of sorts by Mr. King after he was nearly hit by a van whilst jogging (note: he bought the van and destroyed it by hammer and bat).
Rating: 
Summary: So-So
Review: Stephen King's digital story is fairly good. His usual slice of life runs headlong into horror story that mainly revolves around a young man's relationship with his single mother. The characters are great and the dramatic parts of the story work very well and are touching -- mirroring King's relationship with his own mother and her passing. But the horror part is less than satisfying -- a nice little build up that goes nowhere. As the character asks at the end, "what was the point of that?"My main reason for writing the review is to keep you from the same mistake I did. The e-book is included in written form in the collection Everything's Eventual (as are the audio books LT's Theory of Pets and Blood+Smoke). You can't even print the e-book out to get the nice cover art. Keep your money. Buy Everything's Eventual. You'll get this nice little story plus 13 others (see my review there) and it will look much nicer on your shelf than this will on your hard drive.
Rating:
Summary: Story's OK, but . . .
Review: Stephen King's digital story is fairly good. His usual slice of life runs headlong into horror story that mainly revolves around a young man's relationship with his single mother. The characters are great and the dramatic parts of the story work very well and are touching -- mirroring King's relationship with his own mother and her passing. But the horror part is less than satisfying -- a nice little build up that goes nowhere. As the character asks at the end, "what was the point of that?" My main reason for writing the review is to keep you from the same mistake I did. The e-book is included in written form in the collection Everything's Eventual (as are the audio books LT's Theory of Pets and Blood+Smoke). You can't even print the e-book out to get the nice cover art. Keep your money. Buy Everything's Eventual. You'll get this nice little story plus 13 others (see my review there) and it will look much nicer on your shelf than this will on your hard drive.
Rating: 
Summary: The Diary of Jack the Ripper
Review: The Diary of Jack the Ripper, a positively captivating book, presents one of the most fascinating puzzles in crime history featuring one of the first serial killers, Jack the Ripper. Successfully paralleling the lives of James Maybrick and his suspected alias Jack the Ripper, Harrison creates the mystery and suspense of his true identity. The book includes all the goury, spine-tingling details of each murder and the intriguing, controversial diary. A definite page-turner, The Diary of Jack the Ripper is a chilling collection of information concerning the discovery, investigation, and debate concerning the diary and the identity of one of the most notorious murderers of all time.
Rating:
Summary: Study in Boredom
Review: This appears to be an exercise or something King thought up one day to pass some time and relieve his own boredom. It's definitely below par for a writer with such a gift and frankly, when he churns out stuff like this I wonder if he's not just proving to himself that if it has his name on it, it will sell. Oh well. He is still the master storyteller of our time.
Rating:
Summary: Lacks true punch
Review: This audio version of the short story is very well done. Josh Hamilton as the reader does a very good job. This is typical King material but lacks true punch as a horror novel. The underlying morale of the story was not lost on me and I do enjoy philosophical undertones the King adds to many of his novels. Still, the story did not scare me or even enthrall me. In that, I found it lacking.
Rating:
Summary: IT is FREE
Review: This is a not so great book wich was given away FREE (I have it in my PC) I do not understand why they are charging for it. For free..I did not enjoy it too much, now paying..uff
Rating:
Summary: unexpected disappointment
Review: With all the hype about this being a pioneering effort in e-book media,and that too by one of my favorite authors,Stephen King,it was a big let down.The only thing commendable is that it started the e-books rolling.I'm sure ,in time to come ,Stephen will deliver a good one
Rating:
Summary: Reading the Bulletin
Review: With rare exceptions, I've always preferred Stephen King's full-length works to his short stories. It's not that the quality of his shorts is lacking; it's the fact that King is an endurance runner rather than a sprinter. He's in his element only when pounding out a tome of 500 or more pages. He starts slowly but self-assuredly, finds his pace in a leisurely manner, then gets you striding alongside him as he leads you through the tale. He keeps you going with his wit and imagination, and especially with his eye for truth. All his stories, long and short, have truth in them, even the most bizarre of them. Be the events as bizarre and other-worldly as they may, King's characters are realistic and react to these happenings in the most believable manner. In the last 100 or so pages, as the finish line becomes visible up ahead, you almost want to slow down and savor the run. But you find yourself perversely picking up the pace and racing the author to break the tape. And when it's all over, you are surprised to find yourself not tired but stimulated by the run, and breathless from exhilaration rather than exertion. With a Stephen King short story, however, you begin in the same unhurried way, prancing, high-stepping, and swinging your arms to warm up for the run ahead. Then you and King ease into your pace ... and you suddenly stumble. You bounce up to continue the run, only to look behind you and see the broken tape on the ground. What you tripped over was the string marking the finish line. The story is done. Don't bother looking around for the author; he's already off to the next track, pencil or keyboard in hand. As I said, this is the way I feel about King's works in general, with rare exceptions. "Riding the Bullet" is no exception. It's 64 pages long, a tithe (to his muse, no doubt) of one of his novels. In it, King has a lot to say about life and death (which are, after all, two sides of the same coin). But in only 64 pages, there's a distinct limit to the amount of time he can spend on each topic. To his credit, he gets it all in without breaking stride or making the ideas seem like unrhyming Burma Shave signs (One generation dies so the next may live / None of us asks to be born / The living feel guilt about their survival in the presence of the dead, etc.). Still, to quote an epitaph featured in the tale, "Well begun, too soon done". I was left wanting more ... and yet am forced to acknowledge that there is nothing left for King to say without beating the proverbial dead horse. Or to quote the main character's mother, "Fun is fun and done is done". The title, an allusion to a roller coaster called The Bullet, is an apt analogy for the story itself. Like an amusement park ride, you waits in line, you pays your money, and the ride is over far too soon. But it's a good ride, well worth the price of admission. And you're gonna wanna go on it again. My main complaint with "Riding the Bullet" is with its format. This was my first time reading an e-book, and I was disappointed to discover that this one is encrypted to make electronic copying and even printing impossible. Call me a fossil, but for me reading a book is a sensual experience. Holding the paper in my hands and turning the pages cannot satisfactorily be replaced by staring at a glowing 17-inch screen and clicking a mouse button. I understand the desire for encryption, and I support the author's right to earn money from his hard work. But I resent being treated like a criminal. After all, if I really wanted to plagiarize or pirate this story, encryption is no obstacle: I could simply type it into my word processing program.
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