Night Shift

Night Shift is Stephen King's first collection of short stories, first published in 1978. In 1980, Night Shift won the Balrog Award for Best Collection, and in 1979 it was nominated as best collection for the Locus Award and the World Fantasy Award. Contents Details The book was published on the heels of The Shining (1977 Doubleday) and is King's fifth published book (including Rage, which was published under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman). Nine of the twenty stories had first appeared in issues of Cavalier Magazine from 1970 to 1975; others were originally published in Penthouse, Cosmopolitan, Gallery, Ubris, and Maine Magazine. The stories "Jerusalem's Lot", "Quitters, Inc.", "The Last Rung on the Ladder", and "The Woman in the Room" appeared for the first time in this collection. Foreword and introduction Night Shift is the first book for which King wrote a foreword. The introduction was written by one of King's favorite authors, John D. MacDonald. MacDonald writes that "Stephen King is a far, far better writer at thirty than I was at thirty, or at forty. I am entitled to hate him a little bit for this." He adds, "I will say that I do not give a diddly-whoop what Stephen King chooses as an area in which to write. The fact that he presently enjoys writing in the field of spooks and spells and slitherings in the cellar is to me the least interesting fact about the man anyone can relate", predicting that "Stephen King is not going to restrict himself to his present area of intense interest."