A lot of horror fans discover Stephen King on their own, pretty early in their lives, if only because it seems like hes always in the news over one release, adaptation, event or another. Take the most recent batch of King-related screen projects, for instance. Oz Perkins goofy, gory short-story adaptation The Monkey is in theaters as of this writing. Midnight Mass creator Mike Flanagan is working on an adaptation of Kings Dark Tower books, and has another movie adaptation, The Life of Chuck, coming to theaters in June. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World director Edgar Wright has his own King adaptation, The Running Man, coming in November. King himself has a new novel, Never Flinch, coming in May, and a childrens picture book with Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak set for release in September. And at any given moment, there are at least half a dozen new movies or TV shows based on Kings work in development somewhere.This level of cultural saturation can be intimidating when it comes to taking a first step with a creator and so can Kings massive back catalog of work, which at this point includes more than 60 novels and more than 125 short stories over the past 50-plus years. But for King fans, that library isnt intimidating its exciting, once you start reading him and realize Theres a whole library of books out there that are this immersive, expressive, and hypnotic. Heres how to join the tribe.Where should you start reading Stephen King?There are a lot of potential jumping-on points for Kings work, depending on whether your horror-hyphenate tastes lean more toward fantasy, crime drama, modern-day thriller, supernatural terror, or a specific, familiar horror trope, like ghosts, vampires, or werewolves. But if you really want the purest King experience, youll get it in the neatest, most efficient package with Misery, his 1987 novel about a popular writer who falls into the hands of his self-proclaimed biggest fan, who demands he revive her favorite character and write her a new installment of her favorite series on pain of worse things than death.King has always put a lot of himself into his work. A lot of his protagonists are writers or other creative types, a lot of them struggle with addiction as he famously did early in his career, and a lot of them live in his home state of Maine. When he was hit by a van and nearly killed in 1999, he wrote the event into several of his stories, even showing up as a character himself late in his Dark Tower books, where his characters intervene to save his life.And yet Misery still comes across as his most directly personal work, because its so clearly about a writer struggling with what made him famous and what hed rather be known for, with the disjunction between what he wants and what his fans want, and with the existential writers problem of having to be creative on demand for a judgmental audience, or lose everything. Putting his protagonist, novelist Paul Sheldon, at the mercy of mentally ill fan Annie Wilkes lets King explore the feeling of writing, from the first genesis of an idea to the development process to the sensation of completion, and its easy to imagine him writing much of the book directly from his own experience.That dynamic keeps Misery insightful and engaging, and lets it feel like a real window into Kings head. But what makes it such a breathless, streamlined read is the fact that its demonstrably set in the real world. There are no world-spanning fantasy settings to establish, no suspension of disbelief to overcome around boogeymen and monsters and magic. Annie Wilkes isnt scary because she has supernatural powers, shes scary because she has simple, real-world power over Paul, and because shes a classic entitled, toxic fan.Misery was written before the internet-era phenomenon of noisy, demanding, eternally angry fandoms dominating online discussions, but Annie is still a recognizable and fairly believable type, particularly in her conviction that her tastes are sacrosanct and no one elses opinions matter. Add in the addition of absolute control over Pauls life, no barriers about what shes willing to do to him, and Misery is an efficient encapsulation of a writers nightmare. Its twists are surprising and authentically frightening.King is known for his narrative sprawl and large, carefully realized casts in doorstop books like IT or The Stand, but Misery focuses tightly on two characters locked in mortal combat, with nothing but a typewriter and a shared story as a barrier between them. Its the most pared-down version of King in thriller mode.Next stepsIf you like Misery, there are a lot of different directions to go from there. If youre a short-story fan, Ive always held that Skeleton Crew, the collection featuring some of Kings all-time greatest shorter works (including The Mist, which ends very differently from Frank Darabonts movie version) is an efficient introduction to his range: It includes science fiction, a few poems, some creature stories, some people are scarier than monsters stories, and my personal favorite King story, the endlessly nasty Survivor Type, about a man stranded on a tiny, barren island with nothing to eat but himself. And he makes a pretty good go of it.If youre just into King for the horror aspect, The Shining tops most ranked lists of his scariest books and once again, its strikingly different from the best-known movie adaptation, directed by Stanley Kubrick. (Which King often reminds audiences of when trashing Kubricks movie though Kings approved TV adaptation is a horrendous mess that undermines everything that works in the book.) As a novel, The Shining is a master class in dread and foreshadowing, a steady pileup of threatening events that turn a familys retreat to a snowed-in hotel for the winter into an exercise in slow-burn horror, right up to the explosive ending.If, on the other hand, you want to see more of Kings range through his novels, hes jumped genres often in his career, and his bibliography is full of distinctive one-off projects that make him particularly enjoyable to explore. The Eyes of the Dragon is pure dark fantasy, set in a world of castles, kingdoms, and dragons. The Stand is an epic exercise in reshaping our familiar world into a place where stark, symbolic good-versus-evil battles can take place: It starts as one of his more grounded, real-world novels, until a pandemic sweeps across the globe and remakes it in a new form. Hes done memorable takes on the time-travel story (11/22/63), the creepy shop that sells people whatever they want but exacts a terrible price (Needful Things), and of course, the monster that turns into whatever you fear most trope (IT).One of his sleekest and most absorbing recent novels, The Outsider, is also a contender on his scariest list, and its much more of a police procedural than a classic horror novel, even though it is built around an impossible monster out of folklore. And while The Outsider stands on its own extremely well, anyone who enjoys that cops-and-monsters mode can explore the rest of the series around it, centering on neuroatypical amateur (and eventually professional) sleuth Holly Gibney. (Wicked star Cynthia Erivo plays her in Maxs adaptation of The Outsider, which is both one of the more faithful King-to-screen adaptations, and one of the more thoughtful and well-realized ones.)Finally, if you polled 20 King fans about their favorite of his works, youd probably get at least a dozen answers, especially if you took his most famous, most discussed books off the table. My personal favorite the only one I routinely pick up and reread on a lark is The Long Walk, originally published in 1979 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, during an era when King was experimenting to see whether his writing could still find an audience without his famous name attached.The Long Walk is another horror story without even a hint of the supernatural, a dystopian-future tale about an annual contest where a hundred teenagers set off walking together, accompanied by a cordon of soldiers who shoot anyone who drops below a certain speed. The final survivor gets to ask for anything he wants.Long before Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games turned dystopian futures and teen survival contests into an international trend, The Long Walk zoomed in on the mindset involved in this kind of fatal contest why young men would volunteer for it, and what the experience would be like. Its another efficient, well-described exercise in doom, dread, and inevitability, a propulsive and immersive experience in falling into the head of someone going through a terrifying and inescapable experience.But thats something all of Kings best books share a strong sense of perspective and a close attention to small, realistic detail. Its easy to get swept up in his stories because they simultaneously move so fast and make space for convincing, close world-building and character-building. If youre just getting started with him now, you have a fun time ahead of you. King has often described how readily and completely he falls into writing, and how the world falls away in the process. Reading his best work is often exactly like that as well.