If It Bleeds, the title of Stephen King’s latest release, consists of four novellas. The first story, “Mr. Harrington’s Phone,” follows the life of a boy who works for and befriends a rich man and introduces him to (then) new-fangled cellphone technology. When the man dies, the boy slips the man’s beloved iPhone into his suit pocket so he’s buried with it. The boy is inspired to phone the number and you’ll have to read the story to learn the rest. The second story, “The Life of Chuck,” begins with a giant billboard thanking Chuck for 39 years. Nobody knows why. The third story, and title of the collection, is “If It Bleeds,” derived from the journalism maxim, “if it bleeds, it leads.” The protagonist is Holly Gibney, a character who has appeared in King’s previous work and the premise in this story draws from The Outsider. The fourth story is “Rat,” in which an ambitious protagonist enters into a Faustian bargain with a rat. All of these stories are classic Stephen King with ordinary daily-life details and characters who behave like real people. Kirkus Reviews calls this collection “a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.”
