This collection of short works is comprised of pieces that previously appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, Playboy, and McSweeney's, in a volume that includes such tales as ""The Gingerbread Girl"" and "N."

Civilization doesn't end with a bang or a whimper. It ends with a call on your cell phone. What happens on the afternoon of October 1 came to be known as the Pulse, a signal sent though every operating cell phone that turns its user into something...well, something less than human. Savage, murderous, unthinking-and on a wanton rampage. Terrorist act? Cyber prank gone haywire? It really doesn't matter, not to the people who avoided the technological...

Suspected of killing Vera Donovan, her wealthy employer, Dolores Claiborne tells police the story of her life, Harkeninng back to her violent husband, disintegrating marriage and the suspicious death of Joe Claiborne thirty years earlier. Dolores also tells of Vera's physical and mental decline and of her loyalty to an employer who has become emotionally demanding in recent years.

Once upon a time, in the haunted city of Derry site of the classicsItandInsomnia,four boys stood together and did a brave thing. Certainly a good thing, perhaps even a great thing. Something that changed them in ways they could never begin to understand.Twenty-five years later, the boys are now men with separate lives and separate troubles. But the ties endure. Each hunting season the foursome reunite in the woods of Maine. This year, a stranger stumbles...

Young Pete Simmons just wanted to have some fun and explore when he stumbled onto the old abandoned rest stop at Mile 81 on the Maine turnpike. Instead, he discovers a scene of bloodshed and carnage. A car has pulled into the boarded-up service station, a run-down, muddy station wagon without any plates, and without a driver. As the car claims the lives of one would-be good Samaritan after another, Pete decides that it's up to him to stop the evil...

Imagine America devastated by a vast killer plague and the group of men and women coming together to make a last stand against it.