The Functions of Unnatural Death in Stephen King: Murder, Sickness, and Plots examines over thirty of King's works and looks at the character deaths within them, placing them first within the chronology of the plot and then assigning them a function. Death is horrific and perhaps the only universal horror because it comes to us all. Stephen King, known as the Master of Horror, rarely writes without including death in his works. However, he keeps death from being repetitious or fully expected because of the ways in which he plays with the subject, maintaining what he himself has called a childlike approach to death. Although character deaths are a constant, the narrative function of those deaths changes depending on their placement within the plot. By separating out the purposes of early deaths from those that come during the rising action or during the climax, this book examines the myriad ways character deaths in King can affect surviving characters and therefore the plot. Even though character deaths are frequent and hardly ever occur only once in a book, King's varying approaches to, and uses of, these deaths show how he continues to play with both the subject and its facets of horror throughout his work.

Stephen King frequently places his human characters in danger against a supernatural antagonist. These characters, being realists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, must first overcome their disbelief at what is happening to them, and then decide what to do about it. Both their explanations for the strange happenings and their attempts to deal with them can be divided into four main categories: cultural appropriation; Christianity, especially Catholic rites; attempts at utter destruction; and a resignation to simply live-or die-with the supernatural intact. This book examines over 30 of King's works, revealing that the overall success of the characters in removing the supernatural threat from their towns, or perhaps defeating it entirely, does not depend fully on which of these four paths of action they choose. It is possible for any attempt to destroy the supernatural threat to fail, and what works in one of King's books will not have the same outcome in another. For King, the most likely success comes when his characters can choose a course of action that allows them to stand and be true to themselves.

The Modern Stephen King Canon: Beyond Horror is a collection of essays focused on the more recent writings of Stephen King, including Revival, 11/22/63, and a selection of short stories by the "Master of the Macabre." The authors write about King works that have received little critical attention and aim to open up doorways of analysis and insight that will help readers gain a stronger appreciation for the depth and detail within King's fiction. Indeed, while King is often relegated to the role of a genre writer (horror), the essays in this collection consider the merits of King's writing beyond the basics of horror for which he is primarily known. Recommended for scholars of literature, horror, and popular culture.

Some criminals become household names, while others--even those who seek recognition through their crimes-are forgotten. The criminal's actions are only a part of every famous true crime story. Other factors, such as the setting and circumstances of the crimes and the ways in which others take control of the narrative, ultimately drive their notoriety. Through a comparison of the tellings and retellings of two famous cases more than a century apart-the Jack the Ripper killings in 1888, and the murder trials of Steven Avery as documented in Making a Murderer-this book examines the complicated dynamics of criminal celebrity.

Decades before the coining of the term "serial killer," H.H. Holmes murdered dozens of people in his now-infamous Chicago "Murder Castle." In his own autobiography, Holmes struggled to define himself in the language of the late nineteenth century. As the "first"-or, as he labeled himself, "The Greatest Criminal of the Age"-he had no one to compare himself to, and no ready-made biographical structure to follow. Holmes was thus nearly able to invent himself from scratch. This book uses Holmes' writings and confessions to inspect how the Arch Fiend represented himself. Although the legitimacy of Holmes' personal accounts have been called into question, his biography mirrors the narrative structure of the true crime genre that emerged decades after his death.

The Modern Stephen King Canon: Beyond Horror is a collection of essays focused on the more recent writings of Stephen King, including Revival, 11/22/63, and a selection of short stories by the "Master of the Macabre." The authors write about King works that have received little critical attention and aim to open up doorways of analysis and insight that will help readers gain a stronger appreciation for the depth and detail within King's fiction. Indeed, while King is often relegated to the role of a genre writer (horror), the essays in this collection consider the merits of King's writing beyond the basics of horror for which he is primarily known. Recommended for scholars of literature, horror, and popular culture.

Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, Kate Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly might be contenders for the most written about women in all of history, and yet their names mean little unless connected with that of their killer: Jack the Ripper. Every text that pursues the Ripper must mention them-and describe their mutilated bodies in detail-but the women themselves remain just as mysterious as their murderer. It has been over a century since the Ripper stalked prostitutes through the streets of Whitechapel, and myriad authors have tried again and again to give the murderer a name, a face, and a biography. But what of the women? Here for the first time we see a survey of what those books have had to say about the Canonical Five victims of Jack the Ripper. These authors have at times nearly passed over the living women in order to focus on their corpses, but each has revealed something about how contemporary society viewed those who met the Ripper's knife. This book explores the changing attitudes toward these five women in order to examine how cultural perception of victims has-or has not-changed since the Victorian era.