The Bazaar of Bad Dreams: Stories by Stephen King [Signed]

1230 Avenue of the America, New York: Scribner, 2018. Signed by Stephen King at title page: "Stephen King". Rare signed title. Includes certification card and small label adjacent title page from Verified Signature Authority with number: V14796. First Scribner Softcover Edition March, 2018; sixth printing; number-line beginning w/6. Matte black wraps, bloody red glossy titles, silver visage opening into scene of swamp reaper and sickle w/silver butterflies emanating. Pages fine, clean. Bind fine, square; spine unread. Near fine signed rarity. Insured post. The masterful story collection from O. Henry Prize winner includes twenty-one iconic stories with accompanying autobiographical comments on when, why and how he came to write (or rewrite) each one. For more than thirty-five years, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. In this new collection he introduces each story with a passage about its origins or his motivations for writing it. "I made these stories especially for you," says King. "Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth." As Entertainment Weekly said about this collection: "The Bazaar of Bad Dreams is bursting with classic King terror, but what we love most are the thoughtful introductions he gives to each tale that explain what was going on in his life as he wrote it." There are thrilling connections between stories; themes of morality, the afterlife, guilt, what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past. In "Afterlife," a man who died of colon cancer keeps reliving the same life, repeating his mistakes over and over again. Several stories feature characters at the end of life, revisiting their crimes and misdemeanors. Others address what happens when someone discovers that he has supernatural powers - the columnist who kills people by writing their obituaries in "Obits;" the old judge in "The Dune" who, as a boy, canoed to a deserted island and saw names written in the sand, people who then died in freak accidents. In "Morality," King looks at how a marriage and two lives fall apart after the wife and husband enter into what seems, at first, a devil’s pact they can win. Includes the story "Premium Harmony" set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine.. Signed by Author. First Edition. Soft Cover. Fine. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" Tall.