Cover of Hearts in Atlantis

Hearts in Atlantis

Five interconnected, sequential narratives, set in the years from 1960 to 1999. Each story is deeply rooted in the sixties, and each is haunted by the Vietnam War.

Stephen King, whose first novel, Carrie, was published in 1974, the year before the last U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam, is the first hugely popular writer of the TV generation. Images from that war — and the protests against it — had flooded America's living rooms for a decade. Hearts in Atlantis, King's newest fiction, is composed of five interconnected, sequential narratives, set in the years from 1960 to 1999. Each story is deeply rooted in the sixties, and each is haunted by the Vietnam War.

Read more

In Part One, "Low Men in Yellow Coats," eleven-year-old Bobby Garfield discovers a world of predatory malice in his own neighborhood. He also discovers that adults are sometimes not rescuers but at the heart of the terror.

In the title story, a bunch of college kids get hooked on a card game, discover the possibility of protest...and confront their own collective heart of darkness, where laughter may be no more than the thinly disguised cry of the beast.

In "Blind Willie" and "Why We're in Vietnam," two men who grew up with Bobby in suburban Connecticut try to fill the emptiness of the post-Vietnam era in an America which sometimes seems as hollow — and as haunted — as their own lives.

And in "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling," this remarkable book's denouement, Bobby returns to his hometown where one final secret, the hope of redemption, and his heart's desire may await him.

Full of danger, full of suspense, most of all full of heart, Stephen King's new book will take some readers to a place they have never been...and others to a place they have never been able to completely leave.

Genre
horrorfantasythrillerwar and militaryscience fiction
Setting
1960s1990s20th centuryconnecticutnew york city
Mood
intriguedarkemotionalthought provoking
Audience
adult
Length
epic · 640 pages
Form
short stories

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Hearts in Atlantis? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Hearts in Atlantis. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. In the Flesh Shares horror, fiction, short stories
  2. Nightmares & Dreamscapes, Volume II Shares horror, king, fiction
  3. It Grows on You, and Other Stories Shares horror, king, fiction
  4. The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger - The Battle of Tull Shares horror, king, fantasy

“People who read Hearts in Atlantis tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Screwjack: A Short Story
  2. Magic Terror
  3. Darkfall
  4. When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden: What the Government Should Be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism

“If you want more of the same (horror), start with these.”

  1. At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror
  2. Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales
  3. House of Leaves
  4. The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

“If it was the king that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red
  2. Small World
  3. The Dark Worlds of H.P. Lovecraft, Vol 4
  4. The Dark Worlds of H.P. Lovecraft, Vol 2

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. The White Road
  2. When the Hipchicks Went to War
  3. Riverine: A Memoir from Anywhere But Here
  4. Erewhon Revisited