Oh definitely Pet Sematary. That was the third one I read (after Carrie and Cujo, two other good ones). And The Shining. Oh and Christine. Any of those ones and you’re fine.
I’m amazed no one has mentioned The Eyes of the Dragon. Good fantasy book, good villain(one of my all time favorites). There’s some supernatural stuff, but come on, it’s fantasy. One of the times where King was able to write something other than horror and do it well.
Pet Sematary is definitely in my top 5 by King. It is terrifically scary, a novel written by a man who turns a certain age and realizes, “Holy crap–I and everyone I know are going to be dead some day.”
The other top ones, IMNSHO, would be The Shining, The Stand, Christine, IT and The Drawing of the Three.
Of King’s early work, I would say that my favorite is The Dead Zone. It’s the first book where he really starts to stretch a little as a writer, and the narrative is nice and tight as a result.
A close second is Carrie… I re-read it every so often and am always impressed by it. It’s definitely early, unpolished work, but remarkably good for that. And not bad for something his wife pulled out of the trash!
For recent work, I’ll repeat the recommendation for Gerald’s Game, which is one of his most frightening books, especially since it was mostly not supernatural (though there was a slight supernatural element during the eclipse). Another book that avoids the supernatural is The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which is a very good read. Hearts in Atlantis is mostly excellent, though one story was disappointing to me. And finally, Rose Madder remains one of my favorite King books, despite a slight flinch at an overdone ending.
His best work overall, spanning his entire career, is the Dark Tower series… seen mainly in the four (so far) books in the series, but we also get glimpses of it in Insomnia, Black House, Hearts in Atlantis, and the short story “The Little Sisters of Eluria” in Everything’s Eventual, among other places. The actual series will be seven books when it’s done (possibly by 2004), and it’s clearly King’s masterwork. It keeps popping into his other work, and it’s a world of remarkable depth and richness. I’m looking anxiouslu forward to the rest of it.
I’ll try to top five it:
The Shining
Pet Sematary
Needful Things (very dark humour, and more about the horribleness people do to each other rather than supernatural.)
Dark Tower
Eyes of the Dragon with qualifiers. It’s not his normal type of book so I wouldn’t read it first it’ll give you the wrong impression. It’s almost juvenile fiction (though not Potter-ish) rather than adult fare, but still very good.
Do short stories count? If so, “They’ve got a Hell of a Band” is one of the best. As far as books go, The Dead Zone is a personal favourite, as are many of his novellas (Rage, The Body)
I threw down Dreamcatcher in disgust about a third of the way through. Loved the Dark Tower books but agree that they may not be the best choice for a first glimpse. My first was Cujo, a pretty good first. Recommend Firestarter for your first. Then maybe The Shining, and the short story collections/novellas. Loved Eyes of the Dragon but also agree it is not indicative of King’s writing style.
Cat Fight: “They’ve Got a Hell of a Band” really got to me for some reason. I read it a long time ago and it still makes me feel funny when I think of it.
Have fun, Windwalker. You have a lot of good, varied suggestions here and may have to resort to picking the one with the most interesting cover art or by reading the synopses and seeing which one is most enticing.
I’ve read everything by Stephen King and the only ones I did not particularly care for are the Dark Tower books…and everyone seems to love them but me. Go figure.
If I pick just one favorite, its The Stand.
To round out my top 5:
The Shining
Desparation
Salem’s Lot
It
King is King!
Oh yeah… King’s long-form science fiction is absolutely dreadful (The Tommyknockers and Dreamcatcher are his two worst books, in my opinion, the former being the only one I don’t own), and should be avoided if at all possible.
His rare forays into short science-fiction are better, though. “The Jaunt” was one of my favorite early stories of his.
My vote goes to either Salem’s Lot (a good, classic, story) or The Shining (I stayed up all night with the lights so I could finish it). I avoid The Shining movie like the plague (Shelly Duval is as wooden as a dime store Indian).
The Stand was good right up to the very end, then he took the very easy way out (IMHO). Talk about Deus Ex Machina.
I haven’t read a thing by him since.
I don’t mean to nitpick, but IT took place in the fictional town of Derry, Maine, which was also the setting for Insomnia; a few characters and events carried forward to the later book as well.
A good primer on Castle Rock (where many of King’s stories are set) is “The Body”, the novella included in Four Seasons, also the basis for the movie Stand By Me. Some characters and events set forth in this story thread through other King books, but it is a non-horror story (as non-horror as King gets, anyway). I do agree that Four Seasons is probably the best first-time King read.
BTW, I am torn between the first version of The Stand from the late 70s and the “Writer’s Cut”, released in the late-80s(?). The later revision includes key overshadowing and plot-progressing events and more overall coloring, but the story itself is very dated, and King changed the dates to reflect the time of the re-issue. Anyone else get torqued by that song, “Can You Dig Your Man?”, supposedly a hit in the late 80s?
An aside, re: the miniseries: Rob Lowe = worst blind black man ever!
Am I being whooshed? Nick wasn’t black in the book (or blind!)
I’ve read almost everything of his. My top five, in order…
- Pet Semetary (scariest of all his novels)
- Green Mile (as good as the movie)
- Misery (better than the movie)
- The Long Walk (as Richard Bachman)
- Dolores Claiborne (never saw the movie but loved the book)
Short story collections…
- Different Seasons (includes The Body and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, both of which were made into excellent movies)
- Hearts In Atlantis (especially the short story of the book title name)
- Night Shift (a whole bunch of stories ranging in quality from terrific to terrible)
- Four Past Midnight (the story Langoliers was well written and worth the book, even though the made-for-TV-movie was trash)
Worst…
- Tommyknockers (the worst… others have said it all)
- IT (a clown?, a spider?)
- Dark Tower series (I know, I know… it’ll go down as his magnum opus, but I just can’t get into it. I forced myself to finish the first one, and never finished the second due to confusion and boredom)
- Dreamcatcher (stupid)
Special category of: Potential Great Book Ruined By A Cheater Ending…
- The Stand.
- uh, none… no competition to The Stand.
Okay, I am going to give you one I don’t think anyone else has, just because it’s my favorite -
The Talisman
Also, I really enjoyed It, Skeleton Crew and most of his other short story books.
My two cents 
Sun Dog, The Long Walk, Uncle Otto’s Truck, The Body and The Raft are all excellent short stories which would be a good introductoin to King. I think these are mostly in the Four Past Midnight compilation. I would say this is definately worth buying, along with Different Seasons and Skeleton Crew.
A couple of full blown novels come to mind that I would recommend:
“Needful Things” - the way all the characters are developed and their lives all become entangled is an superb piece of storytelling IMO.
“Cujo” - excellent story, with a few sub plots developed along the way making it a very readable book.
I rather enjoyed the 1997 TV mini-series version of The Shining – 'course I’ll take Rebecca De Mornay over Olive Oyl any day.
King’s books don’t IMHO transfer all that well to movies – too much of the slowly building tension and/or detail has to be cut for that medium.
To the OP: personal fav is still IT, which scared the bejezzus out of me when I first read it. For myself the rule of thumb is: Early King good, recent King variable and often bad. There are some exceptions – I enjoyed both Insomnia and Rose Madder (hmm… enjoyed Rose?.. OK was freaked a bit by it).
I’m glad to see that others also feel the Tommyknockers to be a steamy pile… and it looks like Dreamcatcher is well worth avoiding.
Another vote for The Shining. Best by a substantial margin.
I agree that certain things (the hedge animals, for one) were better in the 1997 miniseries, and de Mornay was a definite improvement. What pissed me off about the miniseries version of The Shining is, after all King’s kvetching about Kubrick’s version being a good film but not King’s story (which is true), King goes and botches the ending himself! I personally preferred the book version to either film adaptation, but I still think Kubrick’s film is an excellent horror movie in its own right.
I’ll agree that The Stand is his best book, but it’s so long that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it as a starting point. Unless you already like long books, in which case, go for it.
I think Firestarter and Carrie would make good starting points. One of them was my first King book, though I can’t remember which any more.
As for short stories, “Dolan’s Cadillac” is one of my favorite stories, not just of King’s but in all the world of short fiction.
I’m fascinated to hear so many touting Gerald’s Game, because I really hated it enormously when I read it. Maybe I’ll go back and give it another chance.
That was one of the big reasons I hated the bloatware version: he changed the dates but didn’t update any of the cultural stuff. So Frannie, just out of high school in 1988(?) got wistful for her early years of high-school where she listened to Lief Garrett 45s on her battery-powered turntable. In 1988.
Uh-huh.
It was slovenly, inept, and bloated for the sake of being bloated. And he didn’t even give us the two scenes he’d said that the publishers made him cut in the original:
-
One of the good guys (I don’t remember who) was supposed to fall into a cellar filled with rats. Hungry rats.
-
After the nuke, Flagg was supposed to show up in Boulder on his last legs just as Frannie is going into labor with the clothes hanger (like he was foreshadowing) and offer Frannie Stu’s llfe for her unborn child’s. The whole point was “Would Frannie trust God or accept Flagg’s bargain?”
The other problem with The Stand is, despite my enjoyment of it for what it is, the philosophy is the most repugnant Luddite garbage I’ve ever read. King says over and over that the Techies go to Las Vegas and the flower-children go to Boulder as though Tech (as such) is inherently evil. (If he’d said the Evil types went to Vegas, that’d have been fine) If King had an honest bone in his body, he’d have shown the Boulderite flower-children getting cholera from wallowing in their own filth.
Despite that, it’s still a great book. In the original.
Fenris