These 12 stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as King's novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel 'the exhilartion of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,' and in You Like It Darker, listeners will feel that exhilaration too, again and again. Two Talented Bastids explores the long-hidden secret of how the eponymous gentlemen got their skills. In Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream, a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny's most catastrophically. In Rattlesnakes, a sequel to Cujo, a grieving widower travels to Florida for respite and instead receives an unexpected inheritance, with major strings attached. In The Dreamers, a taciturn Vietnam vet answers a job ad and learns that there are some corners of the universe best left unexplored. The Answer Man asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.

Title from container. Playing time from publisher's website.

Two talented bastids --The fifth step -- Willie the weirdo -- Danny Coughlin's bad dream -- Finn -- On Slide Inn Road -- Red screen -- The turbulence expert -- Laurie -- Rattlesnakes -- The dreamers -- The answer man.