Stephen King’s Books Ranked By Decade

When an author has been writing for as long as Stephen King and has been so prolific, it’s inevitable that their readers will debate which decade of their career has been the best. For some writers, that’s an easy task, but for King, who has been writing for well over half a century and whose career spans six decades with no signs of slowing down, it’s a little more challenging – but still a heck of a lot of fun to tackle, as all things involving a Stephen King book ranking should be.

That said, this list will focus solely on his literary career and won’t factor in the many, many Stephen King movie and TV adaptations out there. One, it would make for an entirely different list. Two, it’s not necessarily fair to include any adaptations since there are plenty that Stephen King had no hand in, and a few, like The Lawnmower Man, that King outright hated. So I’ll just focus on his books, viewing each decade through the lens of how they fit into his overall career, how his writing evolved during the time, and the overall quality and reception of his books. Let’s see how they stack up.

6

2000s

Notable Works: Black House, The Dark Tower V-VII, Lisey’s Story, Duma Key, Under the Dome

Most authors would kill to have an entire career even half as successful as King’s 2000s decade was. But compared to the rest of the author’s eras, the 2000s come up short for a few reasons. That’s not to say there aren’t some great books in those ten years – for example, Stephen King wrote one of his own personal all-time favorite books with Lisey’s Story, and we got a long-awaited sequel to his novel co-written with Peter Straub, The Talisman, with Black House. Still, most of his books from the aughts just don’t have the staying power or trademarks that make a true Kingian read.

Related

5 Reasons The Talisman 3 Is Stephen King’s Most Exciting Book In Years

Stephen King has a busy 2025 ahead of him, with multiple projects in the works, but it’s his newly confirmed The Talisman 3 that is the most exciting.

Undoubtedly, some of the uneven quality of the 2000s is due to it being in the post-accident era of King’s life. That accident happened on June 19, 1999, and his recovery was grueling and long. He has also been open about being on necessary painkillers at that time, and the excruciating pain and discomfort he was in when he tried to write in the aftermath of the near-fatal accident. Any decade that saw the finish of King’s Dark Tower series can never be considered a lost decade, but it simply doesn’t pack the punch of other years.

5

2020s

Notable Works: If It Bleeds, Holly, You Like It Darker, Gwendy’s Final Task, Fairy Tale

In fairness, it might have been more accurate to put the current decade at the bottom of the list. We’re only halfway through it, so it’s impossible to determine how it will stack up against the other decades of King’s career in the end. Still, through the first five years, it’s off to a pretty strong and interesting start. The strength of King’s 2020s, so far, has lain in the variety of books he’s published.

In five short years, he’s released two excellent collections, one of short stories and one of novellas, the final collaboration with Richard Chizmar in their Gwendy series, a throwback dark fantasy adventure in the vein of The Talisman with Fairy Tale, and a continuation of his crime novel era with Billy Summers and Holly, with King’s next Holly Gibney book, Never Flinch, due out this year. It’s true that some of his longtime readers don’t love his crime books as much as his horror novels, but nonetheless, it’s impressive to see him master so many different genres.

4

1990s

Notable Works: Needful Things, Gerald’s Game, Insomnia, Desperation, The Regulators, The Green Mile, Hearts in Atlantis, On Writing

The 1990s are a controversial era in Stephen King’s career, with many viewing it as the weakest in his timeline. And that’s fair. It was a decade in which he experimented with actually outlining and plotting his books, as opposed to his usual method of simply seeing where the story goes. King would be the first to say that the results were mixed, and he wasn’t always happy with his books written in the ’90s. But it’s exactly that experimentation that made me bump it higher up on the list.

Related

5 Of His Own Books Stephen King Wasn’t Happy With

Even though he’s written almost 70 books and countless short stories, even Stephen King still has works of his he’s not satisfied with.

The decade quietly includes some of Stephen King’s best books, including The Green Mile, which he initially released in an experimental serial format. He also released his mirror image books of Desperation and The Regulators, one written by himself and one under King’s long-dormant pseudonym, Richard Bachman. Hearts in Atlantis fleshed out the world of The Dark Tower in significant ways, with each story tying together, and Insomnia added a big piece of the puzzle. And he wrote his seminal On Writing, which was half-how-to and half-memoir. That’s a heck of a decade by any measure, and even though not all the experiments worked, it’s earned this spot on the list.

3

2010s

Notable Works: 11/22/63, Joyland, Doctor Sleep, Mr. Mercedes, Revival, The Outsider, Gwendy’s Button Box

If the 2000s were the rough decade after his accident, then the decade immediately after that, the 2010s, could be considered Stephen King’s rebound era. If it weren’t for his earliest decades, it could easily be the top of the list, and would be for any other author. The 2010s were arguably when King really became a true master of his craft, experienced enough to elevate his writing, but humble enough to know what doesn’t work for him. His books of the ’10s exhibit an ease and confidence that can only come when a writer knows exactly who they are and what they’re capable of, and it really felt like a decade when he hit a new gear.

The broad variety of writing that continued in the 2020s was really established in this decade, with King churning out a galaxy of intent, never missing anything he aimed at. This was the decade that saw him launch the Gwendy trilogy with Richard Chizmar in 2017, as well as his crime era with Mr. Mercedes in 2014, and, in the same year, one of his bleakest and most masterful horror stories with Revival. The decade kicked off with his classic sci-fi alt-history novel 11/22/63, and he finally penned a long-gestating sequel to The Shining with Doctor Sleep. There’s a reason that even though it was only a decade ago, more than half of his books from the 2010s have already gotten or are getting adaptations. It’s just that strong.

2

1970s

Notable Works: Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Stand, Night Shift

To be frank, you could flip-flop this decade and the first on the list for the number 1 and 2 spots and be totally justified in whichever order you choose. The 1970s were the decade that started it all, the one that kicked off the career of the most prolific and influential writer of the modern era. Unlike many other writers and creatives who have a sophomore slump, Stephen King hit the ground running when he released Carrie in 1974, and he only got stronger as he went on. The world hadn’t seen a literary mind that burned quite as brightly or as strangely in a while, and his works from the first few years of his career showed it.

Related

If You Call Yourself A Stephen King Fan, You’ve Read These 5 Books Of His, Right?

If you want to call yourself a true Stephen King fan, even a Constant Reader, a handful of his lesser-known books should be on your to-be-read pile.

The first five books of Stephen King’s career were instant classics, immediately immortalized in the horror hall of fame. Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, Night Shift, and The Stand: few authors could ever hope to turn out such books in their entire career, let alone the first five books they ever wrote. Stephen King even squeezed in the now out-of-print Rage at that time, the first book he wrote under the Richard Bachman pseudonym. Still, it was a shortened decade, and he didn’t truly hit his stride until the next, putting the 1970s at the #2 spot on the list.

1

1980s

Notable Works: Cujo, The Dark Tower I-III, Different Seasons, Christine, Pet Sematary, The Talisman, Skeleton Crew, It, Misery

Undoubtedly, the 1980s reign supreme as the best decade of Stephen King’s career so far. While he had an incredibly strong start to his career, by the ’80s, King had settled into a groove and became a prodigious machine of novel-writing – though, admittedly, a lot of that was fueled not just by his fertile imagination, but also the copious amount of drugs he was on at the time. Drugs or not, King had settled firmly into the driver’s seat in the second decade of his professional career, and the works he produced in that time proved it.

Stephen King wrote almost a dozen and a half books in the 1980s, and a solid 80% of them are classics, if not masterpieces, and not even the release of The Tommyknockers in 1987 could kill that momentum. Just consider the following books he released during the decade: Cujo, The Running Man, The Gunslinger, Christine, Pet Sematary, The Talisman (co-written with Peter Straub), The Eyes of the Dragon, It, The Drawing of the Three, Misery – and that’s with me leaving out a few books. That’s an astonishing run, let alone for a writer who was still early in his career.

Beyond just the quality of the books, the 1980s were the decade that well and truly established the iconography of Stephen King, as well as the breadth of his talent. The decade saw him dive into sci-fi, horror, human drama, Western, fantasy, cosmic horror, and epic adventure, handling each one adroitly. It was also the decade that established some of Stephen King’s most enduring villains in Annie Wilkes, Christine, Cujo, and Pennywise the Dancing Clown, as well as installing Randall Flagg as the villainous throughline of King’s universe. He might have been King before, but the 1980s were the decade that made him the King of Horror.

Stephen King

Birthdate

September 21, 1947

Birthplace

Portland, Maine, USA

Professions

Author, Screenwriter, Producer, Director, Actor