This is Stephen King’s personal tour across a cultural landscape carved out of nightmares – an invitation for readers to explore with him the phenomenon of horror – both real and imagined. In Danse Macabre he dissects the “appeal of revulsion” in the notorious EC Comics of the 1950s. He trumpets the masters of horror fiction from Stoker and Lovecraft to Jack Finney and Ira Levin. He champions such TV landmarks as Thriller and The Outer Limits. He pays tribute to the golden age of radio and the unequalled power of the imagination. And he salutes a history of shock-inducing cinema – from killer rabbits to chainsaw massacres, from hill house hauntings to the walking dead.

Whether speculating on the origins of childhood fears, rationalizing the lure of the unspeakable, or reflecting on the screen adaptations of his own novels, this is the last word on horror from the #1 bestselling author who reinvented it.