Why Stephen King Rules
His new short-story collection shows he's as adept as ever at spinning tingling tales of a world where things go awfully awry
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By Thane Peterson
The most horrible of Stephen King's horror tales is one taken from the author's own life: He was nearly killed when he was hit by a car in 1999. You'd expect a wealthy author to be kidnapped for ransom or something equally exotic. But King, true to the spirit of his fiction, was out for an afternoon walk near his home in Maine when a van struck him. The driver explained later that he was distracted as he tried to keep his pet Rottweiler from snitching meat out of a cooler in the back seat.