Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Skeleton Crew
    Unavailable
    Skeleton Crew
    Unavailable
    Skeleton Crew
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    Skeleton Crew

    Written by Stephen King

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Read the ebook instead

    About this audiobook

    "The Raft" is the unforgettable tale of an idyllic autumn swim suddenly transformed into an ordeal of unbridled horror. Read by Stephen King. "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" is a story in which a middle-aged woman in a Mercedes roadster finds a terrifying pathway to paradise. Read by Dana Ivey. "The Monkey"—is it merely a child's wind-up toy, or an incarnation of the purest evil? Read by Matthew Broderick. "Gramma" is the story of a little boy left in charge of his sick grandmother, who's dying to give him a hug.Read by Frances Sternhagen.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighBridge Audio
    Release dateOct 14, 2008
    ISBN9781598878431
    Author

    Stephen King

    Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes the short story collection You Like It Darker, Holly, Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. 

    Related authors

    Related to Skeleton Crew

    Related audiobooks

    Horror Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      What I’ll be READING

      Jun 4, 2020

      Some of my favourites are collections of short stories, as I like to read books outside my own genre of domestic thriller. One of my favourite authors is Alice Munro, but I also adore Elizabeth Strout’s novels about Olive Kitteridge – and recently I’

      3 min read

    • Article

      Top 10 Elderly Heroines In Fiction

      Jul 5, 2023

      Old women do not get a good press in literature. In fairytales and novels, age in women is typically equated with malevolence, weakness or madness. Even when beauty and strength are unnaturally preserved for thousands of years, as in H Rider Haggard’

      4 min read

    • Article

      Hot Off The Press: Authors Pick Their Page-turners For Summer

      Jul 2, 2023

      Author of Birnam Wood (Granta) and the Booker prize-winning The Luminaries (Granta). Named on Granta’s 2023 Best of Young British Novelists list I love stories about couples on the run – nearly always an improvement on the classic “man on the run” ge

      16 min read

    • Article

      Cressida Connolly

      Nov 17, 2021

      The Fell Picador £12.99 If I were a teacher of creative writing, I would ask all my students to read the chapter called Zanzibar from Sarah Moss’s previous novel, Summerwater. Its first sentence is ‘They are trying to have simultaneous orgasms.’ From

      2 min read

    • Article

      Don't Forget The Classics

      Mar 3, 2021

      Don't Forget The Classics
      1 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reads

      Dec 22, 2019

      Normal People by Sally Rooney Sally’s portrayal of an on-off love story will show you why she’s been hailed as ‘the first great millennial author’. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood You read The Handmaid’s Tale and watched the show, now get stuck int

      1 min read

    • Article

      Funny Books For Kids

      Jun 20, 2022

      I read this series with my children a long time ago but the laughter still echoes down the years. The bizarre story of a family of skeletons living together in a suburban house was irresistible… night after night. “Let’s go out and frighten somebody!

      1 min read

    • Article

      Children’s Books

      Sep 22, 2021

      In recent years the gay parent has become a familiar feature in children’s fiction – and now the gay grandparent is gradually becoming part of the landscape too. Grandad’s Camper by Harry Woodgate (Andersen, 32pp, £12.99) is one such example, telling

      2 min read

    • Article

      Soul-stirring Stories

      Jan 28, 2020

      This delightful debut will break your heart,then put it back together again as the story of prickly,stubborn and lonely Millicent Carmichael unfurls. Missy is 79, her son has moved to Australia, she’s estranged from her daughter and she’s missing her

      1 min read

    • Article

      Which Kids’ Book Would You Turn Into A Game?

      Dec 14, 2021

      Any fairy tale by the Grimm brothers would make an excellent creepy but cutesy horror game, and Hansel And Gretel would be my first choice. I love playing horror games with friends and so my adaptation of the story would be a two-player co-op adventu

      2 min read

    • Article

      In Times Of Trouble

      Sep 18, 2023

      by Kate Mildenhall (Simon & Schuster, $37.99) Australian novelist Kate Mildenhall proves once again she’s highly adept at writing about the world to come. In her new novel, the author of the near-future The Mother Fault delivers a stark warning abou

      4 min read

    • Article

      Salt Slow

      May 22, 2019

      Salt Slow
      1 min read

    • Article

      After The Flood

      Oct 9, 2019

      RELEASED OUT NOW! 432 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Kassandra Montag Publisher The Borough Press The world is ending–as we know it, anyway. Climate change will do that. A century into the future, rising sea levels have turned the Americas i

      1 min read

    • Article

      Escapism In The Wild

      May 1, 2019

      Location. Location. Location. Even for books? Do thriller novels set in the Adirondacks use that setting to tell their stories? Thrillers are full of surprises and my first one came before I even turned a page. I found nine Adirondack thrillers publi

      3 min read

    • Article

      EMILY BEARN Recommends Brilliant Holiday Reading For All Ages

      Jun 28, 2023

      Fashion moves fast in children's publishing – and while last year grandmothers topped the bill in picture books, this season it is grandfathers who take centre stage. ‘Every grandad's different,’ is the message in Grandads are the Greatest (Bloomsbur

      3 min read

    • Article

      Christmas Gifts

      Oct 30, 2019

      Did you ever pine after the cake decorations as a child, not the cake? The pointy ballerina, caped crusader? Bowerbird Marion Frith understands the miniature world that children love to inhabit; her own hunting from around the world housed in an alph

      3 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Nov 3, 2021

      When Ed and Rachel arrive at their daughter Gemma’s graduation, they have no idea how their lives are about to change. In front of hundreds of shocked onlookers, Gemma is shot by an unknown assailant. As the police try to work out if it’s a terror at

      1 min read

    • Article

      Little Thieves

      Oct 6, 2021

      RELEASED 19 OCTOBER 512 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobooks Author Margaret Owen Publisher Hodder & Stoughton A loose adaptation of The Goose Girl – one of the Grimm brothers’ more obscure fairy tales – this book spools out a plot you think you’ve seen

      1 min read

    • Article

      Books Of The Month

      May 5, 2023

      By Alex Latimer The Fruits and the Vegetables are long-standing enemies – until secret friends Grape and Mushroom set off on a pilgrimage to the Wise Old Cheese. Can they find a way to bring peace to fruit bowl and veg drawer alike? A riot of verbal

      2 min read

    • Article

      Women’s Work Is Never Done

      Jan 5, 2020

      Women’s Work Is Never Done
      2 min read

    • Article

      Books

      May 17, 2022

      Scottish crime maestro Stuart MacBride is the Sunday Times No 1 bestselling author of the Logan McRae and Ash Henderson novels. His new novel, No Less The Devil is available now (£20.00, Transworld) This is the book that lives deep in the heart of me

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Best Recent Science Fiction And Fantasy – Review Roundup

      Jun 10, 2022

      Ordinary Monsters by JM Miro (Bloomsbury, £17.99)A boy in Mississippi whose wounds heal miraculously after every beating; a girl in Tokyo who entertains her sister by summoning clouds of dust and making them dance; a baby in England who glows with a

      3 min read

    Reviews for Skeleton Crew

    4/5

    1,769 ratings39 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Some scary stuff within these pages...
    • 4/5
      An above average collection of stories. The good stuff is superb, and the few low points are forgettable or forgivable. The capping story, "The Reach," reminds me of one of Wendell Berry's Port William stories with a hint of Gothic ghost story flair. It's really touching. The two that really stuck with me, though: "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet," the best King story-within-a-story, and one of his very early "The Reaper's Image," which reminds me of something from M.R. James.
    • 5/5
      Classic King in all his glory. Contains one of his finest short works, in addition to many others.
    • 2/5
      Do you love?

      Not his best anthology of short-stories/novellas (Different Seasons), but I like this nevertheless. A few highlights:

      The Mist
      The Monkey
      The Raft
      Word Processor of the Gods
      Gramma
      The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet

      These stories were good and creepy. The others...not so good.
    • 4/5
      Contains the novella The Mist which is my favourite Stephen King story of all time!
    • 5/5
      I'll be the first to admit that I'm far more prone to picking up a full-length novel I can sink my teeth into until page 651 and then wish for more, while usually bypassing most short story collections entirely. However, King doesn't seem to be able to write a single dud and his short stories are just as fascinating and intriguing as his long novels. This book was no exception and I absolutely loved it. My favorites were probably The Mist, The Jaunt, The Raft (this one people who have seen Creepshow 2 will probably recognize because it showed up as one of the short stories in that movie, but I found it to be absolutely fascinating to read it via the POV of a single character and being able to use my imagination was even better than seeing it play out in color on TV, not to mention that the differences in the story compared to the Creepshow version were neat to pick out), and Milkman #1 and #2. All of them were great, so it was difficult to pick just these out and I don't think it'd be possible to pick out just one as my top fave out of this collection. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is a fan of Stephen King, horror and the macabre.
    • 3/5
      Just reading The Mist for now.
    • 3/5
      Four novellas in one, each a little different and creepy. Ably narrated, each...stories range from visceral and gruesome to slow and ponderous. The short stories are a bit difficult to follow if you only listen occasionally--probably better if you do each one all at once. The author crams a lot of detail into each story.
    • 5/5
      "Use it, but don't abuse it.""I will and I won't."These quotes are from the short story "Cain Rose Up". I've been saying them, or a version of them ever since I first read this collection, way back when it came out in 1985. How can it be that long ago? Ah well, I love this book, especially as it contains my all time favorite short story of Stephen King's, "Survivor Type"! It's also nostalgic for me, as it also contains the first King short story I ever read, "Nona", from a different collection I found in an old paperback book in our family cabin in Tahoe. And it inspired my fear of wind-up monkeys. Memories...Other quotes I love from this book:"Good drink, good meat, good God, let's eat!" - Garrish from "Cain Rose Up""lady fingers they taste just like lady fingers"- "Survivor Type" "Ohhh, Ceesco!""Ohhhh Pancho!" - "The Raft" "Do you love?" - "Nona" "The Raft" and "The Reach"If I've made any errors in documenting these quotes, blame it on the Fornit in my keyboard...
    • 4/5
      Part of my "ripping yarns" summer reading! The Mist is great, perhaps a bit long.
    • 3/5
      A mixed bag, both in genre and quality.There are two shockingly bad, but mercifully brief, poems. Tellingly, they hadn't been published previously.Two embarrassingly bad science fiction stories. The central idea of The Jaunt is good but the execution is poor. Beachworld is amateurish in conception and execution.Some, like the Milkman stories are just BORING.But there are some good ones. The Reach is very nicely written. The sort of thing you'd half wish weren't technically horror, if the ghost story genre weren't so respectable. Word Processor of the Gods is fun, as is The Raft. The best is The Mist I think. More of a short novel than a short story (I love both but King generally excels at the former than the latter), and very dark. Here even religion leads to madness and death
    • 5/5
      Storygalore! I really love the Jaunt, it is short but it packs as wallop!
    • 3/5
      I thought that I was getting the full book instead of selections when I picked this up. I was looking to read The Mist which isn't actually on this one. I did like the selections, but I'll be going back for the full book soon. I would say these shorts are creepy mind-fucks.
    • 4/5
      Most of the stories in this collection were great. 'The Mist' is the obvious standout, but other stories of equal measure include 'The jaunt', 'The Raft', and 'The Raft', among others.

      Highly recommended if you're looking for a good dose of horror, science fiction, and just regular human drama.
    • 5/5
      Stephen King outdid himself with this compilation of stories. The Mist, The Raft, and Mrs. Todd's Shortcut had me riveted. Word Processor of the Gods creates the type of power we all wish we could have at times. (added things to life or deleted them from existence). Beach World and The Jaunt were probably my least favorite, but that doesn't mean they weren't good.
    • 5/5
      2 very wonderfully twisted tales. I truly do love how he writes
    • 4/5
      The more Stephen King, the more I like his writing. I get the idea some people think he's a crappy bestseller along with all the rest, but hey -- sometimes you shouldn't be snobby. His stuff is easy to read and it deals with real emotions, people who could almost be real, in incredible situations. I get the feeling I've said this all before, so, um. Anyway, it's good to read his short stories. Short stories are quite condensed little things, and in King's case, that's a good thing. None of the lengthy set up he allows himself in his novels, like It and The Stand. "The Mist" is quite long and has quite a bit of set up, but a lot of the others are quite short. It was interesting seeing him do more sci-fi ish stuff, i.e. "The Jaunt".
    • 4/5
      Not all the short stories in thsi collection are winners, but collectively they are quite unnerving.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed some of the short stories in this book (I haven't read the "Bullet," which according to other reviews, I should, one or any of the 'poems' but I can't stand reading poetry)."The Raft" - This was a lot of fun to read. It's almost like watching a movie - you get so into it, you forget you are reading. It reminded me of watching a cheesy horror film where all the teens are doomed to a grisly fate, but I never thought that the "thing" that gets them could possibly be so frightening for what it seems at first (trying not to spoil it)."The Jaunt" - I was hesitant at the start of this story. I love sci-fi but I had never read any written by Stephen King before, so I was apprehensive. However, this story is probably one of the most horrific I've read about teleportation and after "The Fly" I didn't think that was possible. In a weird way, this story reminded me of the film "Event Horizon." When you get to the end, you'll "see" why."The Mist" - (Possible spoilers) I may love this story immensely just because of my own interests (Silent Hill, insects, strictly survival-oriented other dimensions). I love it love it love it - but oddly it wasn't as "fun" to me as "The Raft" was."Beachworld" - A pretty bizarre sci-fi tale about an alien planet. Interesting. Worth a read, but not a favorite of mine."The Monkey" - I enjoyed it, but not as much as some of the others."Nona" - Really sad. Good, but sad. Not a favorite."Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" - Not what I usually expect from Stephen King. It is a good story, but I really didn't like the style in which it was written. It just makes it hard for me to follow when someone is "talking" the story to someone else. However, it is quite memorable. It got me thinking intently about looking for shortcuts!"The Reach" - Another I wouldn't have expected from Stephen King. Not my favorite, but I liked the way of life it provided a window into."The Man Who Wouldn't Shake Hands" - Weird. I didn't like it. And I have no aversion to weird things."Uncle Otto's Truck" - I started this one half-way through after skimming a few pages and not being hooked or interested. It's another weird one - not as good as some of the others. I didn't like it."Survivor Type" - Whoa, just whoa. Good story. Freaking brutal and gruesome and absolutely impossible for me to read without squirming in my seat. I immensely enjoyed it in a rather morbid way."The Wedding Gig" - Boring, but period stuff definitely isn't my thing and that's probably a personal preference. I just don't like to read something that's like a personal account slash biography of some important people in times past."Here There Be Tygers" (I think that's the title) - Sort of pointless. It made no sense to me, so I didn't like it. "Gramma" - Really good, really creepy."Milkman/Deliveries(?) Parts 1&2" - I just didn't "get" these... especially with the way it just ended. The end did not make much sense to me."Cain Rose Up" - I thought this one was pretty poor. I just felt nothing for or about the characters in any way and some of the earlier stories had had my heart pounding even though I didn't particularly like the characters. But maybe the sense of detachment was part of the point of this story. It just didn't impress me."Word Processor of the Gods" - This is probably one of the, if not the, most perfectly put together short stories in the book, in my opinion. However, that said, I enjoyed other stories in this book much more. But this story feels well-put-together in an oddly familiar way.I've been a little more critical than I normally would be, just so I could point out the differences and which ones I thought were best or most fun or most memorable. I read this for fun only and I was not let down. I so wish I could read "The Mist," "The Raft," "Survivor Type," and "The Jaunt" as if they were brand new to me.
    • 4/5
      Classic Stephen King shorts, including the novella The Mist. It was great to revisit them as an adult and I really enjoyed The Monkey, The Raft, and Survivor Type. Though, my favorite of the collection was The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet. Amazing that after all this time, these stories still manage to creep me out just as much as when I was a teenager.
    • 5/5
      Skeleton Crew is still my overall favorite of Stephen King's short story collections. Several of the stories have been used in film and television (in forms that I actually enjoyed!) and I think that overall he does a good job of maintaining an aura of suspense throughout the collection instead of from story to story. The collection actually starts off with a novella, The Mist, that I used an excerpt from during high school for a competitive forensics dramatic reading that I scored very well with throughout the season and received the highest marks available at the state tournament.Some of my favorites from the collection include: The Mist (most people hated the film, I didn't think that it was really THAT bad), The Monkey (one of King's creepiest short stories), The Raft, and Gramma (also my favorite episode from the attempted revival of The Twilight Zone.)Overall, Skeleton Crew is a very solid collection of creepy tales and I thoroughly enjoyed it the second time around.
    • 4/5
      I'm a huge Stephen King fan... but....
      while I very much enjoyed some of these stories (The Raft, The Jaunt, The Mist).. others didn't seem up to par.
    • 4/5
      Reading this so soon after his first anthology, Night Shift, I found Skeleton Crew a disappointment. With his first collection, I only found one story to be really weak and several outstanding. While I wouldn't exactly say this book was the reverse, I only felt about seven stories worth the read. The first story is a short novel of 154 pages that takes up more than a quarter of the book. The Mist deals with a few dozen people trapped in a supermarket by monsters hidden by a mysterious mist. The narrator, David Drayton, himself calls the creatures from a "B-grade film" and that's how the story struck me overall, without the resonance and terror of King's best novels. About two-thirds through, I found myself skimming. There are two poems in the book, neither of which I found impressive--but then I'm no fan of modern poetry. That leaves a 18 short stories and a novella, The Flexible Bullet. That novella alone is almost worth the price of the book. One of the best of King's works in my opinion at any length, written in a masterful omniscient point of view, it's a spooky little tale of the writer's muse, and its closeness to madness. A few of the shorts stand out number standout for how they irked me: "The Jaunt," a rather lame science-fiction effort, is only amusing for its bad stab at prognostication. It has us having almost run out of fossil fuel in 1987, with thousands of people having died in the United States for the lack of heating oil the year before. "The Wedding Gig" comes across as an overextended fat joke, with the wonderful line that, unlike race, one shouldn't feel sorry for those with a weight problem because, "Fat people can always stop eating." (Spoken like a man who never had much of a weight problem. King treated cigarette smoking with a lot more sympathy in the short "Quitters, Inc" in Night Shift.) The obese woman's coffin is described as a "meat locker." Three of the shorts were written when King was just a teen--and it shows--none of those are memorable. "The Monkey" "The Raft" and "Gramma" are vintage King, and delivered up a good dose of horror and suspense. "The Word Processor of the Gods," despite touches of horror, was unusual for leaving me with a smile--rather sunny for a King story. "Survivor Type" on the other hand, was gruesome even for a King story--but I can't say it wasn't memorable. As a collection, I don't think this was as strong as Night Shift, but it certainly contained some unforgettable stories equal--or more--to the best in that book.
    • 4/5
      One of my favorite King books. My favorite two stories were "The Mist," and "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut." The movie version of "The Mist" actually looked alot like I pictured the story in my head. And the story that freaked me out the most was "Survivor Type." I don't think I'd quite go to those lengths to survive! Very chilling and very original.
    • 4/5
      A decent collection of Stephen King's short stories with fantastic "The Mist" - I love this short story and a recent movie inspired by this novella. Other stories worth mentioning are "The Jaunt" - a thrilling little science fiction, "The raft" - King has definitely a gift of making a mundane into dangerous. "The survivor" is definitely memorable and Gramma made me chuckle. In summary - a worthy read.
    • 5/5
      I enjoy Stephen King's earlier short stories the most, and this is probably my favorite collection. It opens with "The Mist," an excellent end-of-the-world story in which Lovecraftian monsters cross over into our dimension. The psychological suspense is as ramped up as the horror; King focuses on a group of ordinary people trapped in a grocery store and the effects that the nightmarish situation has on them, turning some into religious fanatics, others into unlikely heroes. Despite the doorstopper nature of many of King's books (and I really do enjoy the big books), I think most of his best work is in the more contained novella format.The remainder of the stories run the gamut. Some are creepy, some read like an episode of the Twilight Zone, and some are just full-on gross-outs. This collection contains the infamous story "Survivor Type," as well as such gems as "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" and "The Raft." I particularly enjoyed the creepier, more haunting pieces like "Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1)" and "The Reach." One of the most memorable stories in the collection for me is "The Jaunt," a quasi-science fiction story about teleportation that I often find myself thinking about at odd moments.It's good to get this collection down off the shelf and wander back through it, looking back on stories I may not have read for 25 years (imagine that). SKELETON CREW holds up very well.
    • 5/5
      Skeleton Crew is another great collection of short stories by horror master Stephen King. Every original story is premised on ideas that would scare the pants off any child: from freaky death monkey toys to witch possessed grandmas to flesh-consuming oil spills. The overall atmosphere of unbridged terror is, of course, executed to perfection by King.
    • 4/5
      A great collection of stories. Mr. King has many classics, and this is no exception. He doesn't get much better with his short stories.
    • 4/5
      I honestly Love Stephen Kings short stories. The man really knows how to scare you. This book is a collection of some pretty twisted short stories of his. You'll be suprised but just what stories are inside this cover. I had no idea some of his most famous movies were based off of some short stories of his. This was an absolutly great read.
    • 5/5
      Opens with a fantastic novella. The rest of the stories are more variable in quality than those in Night Shift, but the ones that work are more exciting and original. There is also some gory and disturbing stuff here.