In the fourth installment of the Bookmarked series, Aaron Burch tackles Stephen King's Different Seasons.

Contemporary / British English Gordie Lanchance and his three friends are always ready for adventure. When they hear about a dead body in the forest they go to look for it. Then they discover how cruel the world can be.

It began--and ended--in 1958 when seven desperate children searched in the drains beneath Derry for an evil creature, but in 1985, Mike Hanlon, once one of those children, makes six phone calls and disinters an unremembered promise that sets off the ultimate terror.

Now in one stunning collection, four of Stephen King’s most well-loved horror stories: The Mist, Apt Pupil, The Body, and The Sun Dog. Each standalone story is a riveting master class in short fiction from “the reigning King of American popular literature” (Los Angeles Daily News). In The Mist, terror descends in the wake of a summer storm. David Drayton, his son Billy, and their neighbor Brent Norton join dozens of others and head to the local grocery store to replenish supplies and become trapped by a strange mist that has enveloped the town. As the confinement takes its toll on the group’s nerves, staying in the store may prove fatal—so, the Draytons, Brent, and a handful of other survivors attempt their escape. But what’s out there may be worse than what they left behind.​ Apt Pupil follows Todd Bowden, a top-performing student and all around “good kid” who learns his teacher, Mr. Dussander, is more than he seems. Turns out, Mr. Dussander is the target of a decades-old manhunt. He’s never been caught, and Todd doesn’t want to be the one to turn him in. Instead, Todd will face his fears and learn the real meaning of power—and the seductive lure of evil. In The Body, it’s 1960 in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine, and a boy from a neighboring town has vanished. Twelve-year-old Gordie Lachance and his three friends set out on a quest to find his body along the railroad tracks. During the course of their journey, Gordie, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio come to terms with death and the harsh truths of growing up in this iconic, unforgettable, coming-of-age story that was also adapted in the 1986 film classic Stand by Me. In The Sun Dog, Kevin Delavan receives the perfect gift for his fifteenth birthday: a Polaroid Sun 660. But no matter where Kevin Delevan aims the camera, it produces a photograph of an enormous, vicious dog. In each successive picture, the menacing creature draws nearer to the flat surface of the Polaroid film. When old Pop Merrill, the town’s sharpest trader, gets wind of this phenomenon, he envisions a way to profit from it. But the Sun Dog, a beast that shouldn’t exist at all, is a dangerous investment... This beautiful boxed set makes the perfect gift for seasoned King fans and newcomers alike—and features impeccably crafted, page-turning stories you’ll return to again and again.

The conclusion to King's tale of Chester's Mill, Maine, a town that's inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field, and which inspired a CBS TV drama.

“A beautifully crafted novel that sits at the intersection of race and class, that flags the frank truth of the life of migrant workers for whom a flight to freedom can become the most finely woven trap.”—JODI PICOULT, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Two Ways From the prize-winning author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo comes Songbirds, a stunning novel about the disappearance of a Sri Lankan domestic worker and how the most vulnerable people find their voices. Living on the island of Cyprus, Nisha is far from her native Sri Lanka. Though she longs to return home, she knows that working as a “maid” for a wealthy widow is the only way to earn enough to support her daughter, left behind to be raised by relatives. Yiannis is a poacher, trapping the tiny protected songbirds that stop in Cyprus as they migrate each year from Africa to Europe and selling them on the illegal market. He dreams of finding a new way of life, and of marrying Nisha. But one night, Nisha makes dinner, an aromatic dahl curry, for the family who pays her: Petra and her daughter Aliki. Then, after she cleans the kitchen and tucks Aliki into bed, Nisha goes out on a mysterious errand, and vanishes. When the police refuse to pursue the case, Petra takes on the investigation herself, a path that leads her to Nisha’s friends—other workers in the neighborhood—and to the darker side of a migrant’s life, where impossible choices leave them vulnerable, captive, and worse. Inspired by the real-life disappearance of domestic workers in Cyprus, Christy Lefteri has crafted a poignant, deeply empathetic narrative of the human stories behind the headlines. With infinite tenderness and skill, Songbirds offers a triumphant story of the fight for truth and justice, and of women reclaiming their lost voices.