Stephen King Books in Order: All 65 Novels and Where to Start

Stephen King’s books can be read in almost any order, because nearly all of his novels stand alone. Sorted by publication date, the list of Stephen King books in order starts with Carrie in 1974 and runs to Other Worlds Than These, published on October 6, 2026. Order matters most for the eight-book Dark Tower series and the Bill Hodges and Holly Gibney crime novels, both covered below.

This Stephen King reading order guide has five good starting points, every novel in publication order with its first US publication year, the Dark Tower and Holly Gibney reading orders, the story collections and the books announced as of October 2026.

Where to start with Stephen King

The New York Public Library’s beginner guide advises newcomers to pick a shorter King novel first and build up to It and The Stand, which it files among his books of more than 1,000 pages. Carrie and Misery are on its list of King novels of 500 pages or fewer. The other three picks below are editorial choices, each covering a different side of his work.

1. Carrie (1974). His first published novel, under 200 pages in its first edition. Set in the small town of Chamberlain, Maine, it centers on Carrie White, a teenager tormented at school and at home, as she learns she can move objects with her mind.
2. The Shining (1977). King’s official site traces it to a night in late September 1974, when he and his wife were the only guests at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, the day before it closed for the winter. In the novel, Jack Torrance and his family spend a winter alone as caretakers of the Overlook Hotel.
3. Misery (1987). Nearly all of it takes place in one secluded Colorado farmhouse, with two people inside: Paul Sheldon, a bestselling novelist badly hurt in a car crash, and Annie Wilkes, the woman who pulled him out and calls herself his “number one fan.”
4. 11/22/63 (2011). A long book, but the pick for readers who want history rather than horror: a time-travel novel set mostly between 1958 and 1963, with the Kennedy assassination as the event its hero sets out to undo.
5. Mr. Mercedes (2014). The start of the Bill Hodges trilogy and an Edgar Award winner, according to King’s official site, which King has described as his first hard-boiled detective novel. Its hero is Bill Hodges, a retired police detective, and its villain is the driver who rammed a stolen Mercedes into a crowd at a job fair.

Stephen King books in order of publication

These are the Stephen King novels in order, and the rule is simple: the table gives one row to every novel that King’s official site labels a novel or a Bachman novel, with illustrated, revised and uncut reissues sharing their novel’s row, the six original Green Mile installments counted as one novel, and the Bachman Books omnibus left out because its four novels have rows of their own. Years are first US publication years from ISFDB’s Stephen King bibliography, checked against the official site and Wikipedia’s bibliography, with one disputed year explained below the table.

That makes 65 novels as of October 2026: seven published as Richard Bachman, five credited jointly with a co-author, and 53 under King’s own name alone. A few rows need a footnote. Cycle of the Werewolf (1983) and The Eyes of the Dragon (1984) first appeared as limited editions, and wider trade editions followed in 1985 (a Signet paperback) and 1987 (a Viking hardcover). Sources split on Dolores Claiborne: Wikipedia dates the first Viking edition to November 1992 and calls it the top-selling novel in the US that year, while ISFDB dates the Viking edition to January 1993 (after a UK limited edition in October 1992) and the official site gives November 1993. The table follows Wikipedia’s November 1992 US date, the one year not taken from ISFDB’s first US edition. The Green Mile came out in six monthly paperback parts from March to August 1996 before it was collected in one volume. The Stand was reissued in 1990 as The Complete & Uncut Edition, and a revised Gunslinger followed in 2003. The official site also notes that Rage will not be reprinted, at King’s request, because of its subject matter.

Four shorter books that the official site files as novellas were first published on their own, so they sit outside the table: UR (2009, written for the Kindle), Blockade Billy (2010), Gwendy’s Button Box (2017, with Richard Chizmar) and Elevation (2018). The middle book of the Gwendy trilogy, Gwendy’s Magic Feather (2019), is by Chizmar alone.

The Richard Bachman books

The seven Bachman novels are Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, The Running Man, Thinner, The Regulators and Blaze. In the FAQ on his site, King explains that he used the pen name because publishers once believed readers would accept only one book a year from an author, and a second name let him put out two. The official site’s listing for the film adaptation calls The Long Walk his first-written novel, even though it reached print five years after Carrie.

The Dark Tower reading order

Book 1 opens with the line “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed,” and the series follows that gunslinger, Roland Deschain, on his quest for the Dark Tower. The official Dark Tower site lists the eight books in this order:

1. The Gunslinger (1982; revised edition 2003)
2. The Drawing of the Three (1987)
3. The Waste Lands (1991)
4. Wizard and Glass (1997)
5. The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012)
6. Wolves of the Calla (2003)
7. Song of Susannah (2004)
8. The Dark Tower (2004)

The Wind Through the Keyhole was published eighth, but the official site says King likes to call it book 4.5, since its story is set between the close of Wizard and Glass and the opening of Wolves of the Calla. That site describes the series as the center of King’s fictional universe, and the official page for Other Worlds Than These presents the novel as one that also settles what becomes of the worlds of the Dark Tower saga.

Bill Hodges and Holly Gibney books in order

The first three books form the Bill Hodges trilogy. Holly Gibney, who first appears in Mr. Mercedes, becomes Hodges’s partner and later takes the lead in her own stories, so the books read best in this order:

1. Mr. Mercedes (2014)
2. Finders Keepers (2015)
3. End of Watch (2016)
4. The Outsider (2018), in which Holly has a major role
5. “If It Bleeds” (2020), the title novella of the collection If It Bleeds
6. Holly (2023)
7. Never Flinch (2025)

Connected books: Castle Rock, Derry and sequels

The stand-alone novels share settings and a few characters. These links come from King’s official site and ISFDB:

• Castle Rock, Maine: ISFDB groups The Dead Zone, Cujo, The Dark Half and Needful Things as Castle Rock books, and the official synopsis presents Needful Things as King’s farewell to the town. He later returned to it for Gwendy’s Button Box and Elevation.
• Derry, Maine: It and Insomnia are set in Derry, according to their official synopses, and the Dreamcatcher synopsis opens with its four friends as boys in Derry.
• Sequels: Doctor Sleep follows the grown-up Dan Torrance of The Shining, and The Talisman, Black House and Other Worlds Than These form the Talisman trilogy about Jack Sawyer.

Stephen King’s story collections

King’s main short story and novella collections, with first US publication years:

• Night Shift (1978)
• Different Seasons (1982)
• Skeleton Crew (1985)
• Four Past Midnight (1990)
• Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993)
• Hearts in Atlantis (1999)
• Everything’s Eventual (2002)
• Just After Sunset (2008)
• Full Dark, No Stars (2010)
• The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (2015)
• If It Bleeds (2020)
• You Like It Darker (2024)

The official site also files Stephen King Goes to the Movies (2009) among his collections.

Upcoming Stephen King books as of October 2026

As of October 2026, King’s official site lists no new novel after Other Worlds Than These; its upcoming page shows only a UK limited edition of It, due on November 26, 2026. Fangoria reports that Bad Hand Books will publish The End Times: Volume One in early 2027, collecting the serialized post-apocalyptic newspaper King writes with Benjamin Percy; Wikipedia’s entry on the project says King writes as Claudia Inez Bachman, whom the story presents as Richard Bachman’s widow. In an October 2026 interview with the Talking Scared podcast, King gave the title of the next Holly Gibney novel as Anything for Holly and said he was editing it, Lilja’s Library reported; no publication date had been announced as of October 2026. Guides to other authors and series are in the list of more reading orders.

Frequently asked questions

What was Stephen King’s first book?

Carrie was his first published novel, released by Doubleday on April 5, 1974. The Long Walk was written earlier, according to the film listing on his official site, but it did not appear until 1979, when it was published under the Richard Bachman name.

How many books has Stephen King written?

Counting every title his official site labels a novel, with reissues and serial parts folded in, King has published 65 novels as of October 2026. Seven of them came out under the Richard Bachman name and five carry a co-author’s name. He has also published 12 main story collections and four books his site files as novellas that first came out on their own, and Wikipedia’s bibliography lists five nonfiction books, among them On Writing.

What order should I read the Dark Tower in?

Read the seven numbered books in order, from The Gunslinger to The Dark Tower, and slot The Wind Through the Keyhole in after Wizard and Glass and before Wolves of the Calla. King’s official site says he calls it book 4.5 because its story falls between those two volumes.

Do Stephen King’s books have to be read in order?

No. Most of his novels stand alone, so any of them works as a first read. Order matters mainly for the Dark Tower books, the Bill Hodges and Holly Gibney novels, the Talisman trilogy and Doctor Sleep, which follows The Shining.

What is Stephen King’s newest book?

As of October 2026, his newest novel is Other Worlds Than These, published by Scribner on October 6, 2026, as the final book of the Talisman trilogy he began with the late Peter Straub. His previous novel was the Holly Gibney book Never Flinch, published on May 27, 2025, and the next Holly novel, Anything for Holly, has a title but no publication date yet.

Lead photo: The Stephen King House in Bangor, Maine, with its bat and spider-web iron gate. Photo: Warren LeMay, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).