10 Stephen King Books That Aren't Horror (original) (raw)
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Published May 13, 2025, 9:34 AM EDT
Jeremy has more than 2500 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
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He has achieved his 2025 goal of reading all 13,467 novels written by Stephen King, and plans to spend the next year or two getting through the author's 82,756 short stories and 105,433 novellas.
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Things begin with horror, whenever a conversation about Stephen King comes up, and that’s inevitable. After all, the author’s debut novel was Carrie, and within a couple of years, it had been adapted into an also-iconic horror movie. This book was followed by novels like The Shining, Salem’s Lot, and The Stand, with the last of those being a little more than “just” horror, sure.
Later years saw King branching out further and writing stories that were sometimes unnerving and suspenseful, but not exactly “horror” in the traditional sense. What follows are some of the most noteworthy novels of his that aren’t classifiable primarily as horror (though, it should be stressed, there may be scary moments in each). This will also only include his novel-length work, but plenty of his novellas/short stories have also stayed away from horror, including The Body (adapted into Stand by Me) and Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (adapted into The Shawshank Redemption).
1 'The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three'
First published: May 1987
Image via Donald M. Grant, Publisher
Truth be told, no book in The Dark Tower series leans so heavily into horror as to feel primarily like a “scary book” in the traditional sense, but the fantasy here is of the dark variety. But also, just calling this series a dark fantasy one is kind of underselling it, as it’s also got sci-fi concepts, a Western feel in places, and is ultimately an adventure-focused story about one man’s quest to locate – and climb to the top of – the titular dark tower.
Just calling this series a dark fantasy one is kind of underselling it, as it’s also got sci-fi concepts, a Western feel in places, and, ultimately, an adventure-focused story about one man’s quest to locate... the titular Dark Tower.
The second book in the series, The Drawing of the Three, is especially interesting, trippy, and hard to describe. It sees the series protagonist, Roland, cross over into a world recognizable as our own (probably) for the first time, sharing bodies/minds with other human beings, and eventually building up a group of people to go on future adventures with. However you might want to classify it, what’s clear – and most important – is that it’s just a ton of fun to read.
2 'The Eyes of the Dragon'
First published: Fall 1984
Image via Viking
Standing as one of the best Stephen King books to be, as of 2025, without a movie or TV adaptation (that could, of course, change soon), The Eyes of the Dragon saw King embracing fantasy wholeheartedly. There aren’t tons of dragons here, but there is a medieval setting and a great deal of magic that plays into the plot, which is all about a royal family being targeted and manipulated by a magician known as Flagg.
There’s a succession crisis of sorts, betrayal, imprisonment, and redemption, all told in a way that feels epic without ever dragging or overextending itself. The Eyes of the Dragon is just really good and overall underrated, and proves to be one of the easier Stephen King books to blast through (it might only take a few days, if that).
3 'The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands'
First published: September 3, 1991
Image via Donald M. Grant, Publisher
Back to the world of The Dark Tower, here’s the third book in the series: The Waste Lands. Basically, this one plays out like a bit of an extension to The Drawing of the Three, seeing as there’s more drawing/recruiting to be done. Primarily, Jake, who was killed in the original Dark Tower book, technically twice… look, it’s convoluted. But that’s why it’s a series. There’s room to explore and flesh out all these strange concepts and turns in the plot.
Once Jake’s back in action, and the group also recruits a strange creature named Oy, The Waste Lands slows down a little, fleshing out the world of the series some more and then getting all the main characters on a dangerous AI-powered train that will derail if they can’t beat it in a game of riddles. And then it ends on a cliffhanger note right before that game of riddles plays out. As was mentioned before, it’s weird stuff.
4 'The Colorado Kid'
First published: October 4, 2005
Image via Hard Case Crime
Stephen King jumped into the crime/mystery genre with full force when writing The Colorado Kid, and the result was one of his shortest books and also up there as one of the least scary. It’s all about a baffling case that involves a dead body being discovered without any clear clues as to who the man was, or the circumstances behind how he died.
In a sense, The Colorado Kid is a bit of a mystery story that’s also a commentary on the nature of mysteries and why people find them compelling. If you're looking for something that wraps up neatly and satisfies in a more expected kind of way, you may not get that here, but the story is still an enjoyable one to experience, and it helps that it doesn’t overstay its welcome, either.
5 'The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass'
First published: August 9, 1997
Image via Donald M. Grant, Publisher
A Dark Tower story that kind of crosses over with The Stand in interesting ways, Wizard and Glass is also unusual within the series for some other reasons. It is perhaps heavier on fantasy than any of the three Dark Tower books that came before, sacrificing a little by way of science fiction and Western genres in the process, and also, so much of it’s about main character Roland’s backstory.
Wizard and Glass isn't entirely a flashback, because it does have to resolve that whole AI-powered train episode from the end of The Waste Lands, but after that opening – and before the last few chapters – it really is flashback-heavy. It does inevitably slow the overall story down somewhat, but isn't nearly as frustrating an installment when the series is read today (given that there was a six-year gap between The Waste Lands and Wizard and Glass, and then another five-year wait before the fifth novel in the series).
6 'Dolores Claiborne'
First published: November 1992
Image via Viking Press
Speaking of stories that are pretty much entirely flashbacks, here’s Dolores Claiborne, which is about an old woman talking to the police about her possible involvement with two murders. One of them (which is focused on for most of the narrative) was of her husband, who died under suspicious circumstances, with the titular Dolores coming clean about the whole unsettling series of events that led up to such a death.
While Dolores Claiborne does go to some dark places, and its most memorable sequence has a certain unsettling and almost horrific atmosphere to it (it takes place during an eclipse), the novel as a whole isn't quite a work of horror. It’s a very dark psychological drama/thriller sort of book, and a really effectively written one that utilizes a unique structure/narrative set-up exceptionally well.
7 'The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla'
First published: October 2003
Image via Donald M. Grant, Publisher
As a reminder of how Western-y The Gunslinger (the first Dark Tower book) was, the fifth one, Wolves of the Calla, goes full-on The Magnificent Seven, very knowingly, with its premise. Well, linking it to Seven Samurai might be more accurate, seeing as that one came first and influenced The Magnificent Seven, but the novel’s feel is more in line with Westerns than samurai movies.
There are some further weird sci-fi elements, including an increased sense of a multiverse being at play and influencing the main characters, and more fantastical stuff for good measure, too. Wolves of the Calla really is an epic, and touches upon about half-a-dozen different genres more noticeably than it approaches or touches upon horror (even though you'll still find some creepy stuff here, as is fitting for a Dark Tower book).
8 'The Green Mile'
First published between March and August 1996
Image via Signet Books
Frank Darabont has directed three Stephen King adaptations, including one without supernatural elements (The Shawshank Redemption) and one that was very much a work of horror (The Mist). He also did the movie version of The Green Mile, which was a six-part serial novel originally, and one that did have a supernatural/fantasy story, but within a grounded setting and without true horror elements.
For sure, parts of The Green Mile are horrific, especially because it takes place on Death Row and doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to describing what happens when an execution via the use of an electric chair goes wrong. There is an unnerving atmosphere and undeniably bleak subject matter throughout The Green Mile, but it still manages to avoid most trappings of the horror genre, which inevitably makes it extra interesting compared to some of King's other works.
9 'The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower'
First published: September 21, 2004
A big old finale to The Dark Tower series (even if an interquel called The Wind Through the Keyhole was ultimately published in 2012), The Dark Tower (2004) is a risk-taking, emotional, and undeniably intense read. It does the sorts of things you might expect the final entry in a long-running series to do, with there being an increase in stakes and true sense of finality, but then it does other things that make it an undeniably divisive book.
It's not perfect by any means, but it is something special within Stephen King’s body of work, and does fittingly feel like something that needed years and multiple books to properly build to. There’s some horrifying stuff in The Dark Tower (2004), too, but it’s mostly, once again, a story best defined as a blend of dark fantasy, science fiction, and adventure genres.
10 '11/22/63'
First published: November 8, 2011
Image via Charles Scribner's Sons
Undoubtedly one of the most suspenseful books Stephen King has ever written, 11/22/63 is his take on time travel, if you can call that a genre. It’s about a portal that can take you back to 1958, and then when you re-enter the portal and rock up back in 2011, things you did back then could have impacted the future. And so the main character decides that, given 1958 isn't far off from when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, he’s going to stay in the past, prepare over several years, and then thwart the assassination on the titular date.
It's tense enough to be scary at times, but 11/22/63 isn't exactly horror, maybe outside one section near the end that would constitute being a spoiler if discussed. Oh, and there is a bit of a crossover with some characters from It much earlier on, given a large part of that novel was also set in 1958. But 11/22/63 is mostly a work of science fiction and also classifiable as a thriller/suspense book, and a damn good one at that.