While Stephen King has written plenty of grand, sprawling epics, his short fiction was also packed with some extraordinary ...

books in the 20,000-40,000 word range can sometimes hang in a kind of literary no man's land. It's tricky to make them work. SEE ALSO: 13 of the best Stephen King short stories you've never read ...

While some of Stephen King's best-known books are also his longest, it's hard to know if they're actually worth the time it takes to read them.