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Best Stephen King book: The Stand, The Shining or It?

30 October 2026 · Books

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It is the night before Halloween, and there is no better time to argue about Stephen King. Since his first novel in 1974 he has published more than sixty, sold hundreds of millions of copies and given film and television more stories than any other living writer. Every fan has a favourite, and almost every fan thinks the others are wrong. On GOATvs nobody decides for you: every book is picked or passed over one face-off at a time, by everyone, and the box above shows where King's books stand today in the world's list of the greatest books of all time.

The Stand is his biggest book in every sense. A flu escapes from a military laboratory, nearly everyone on Earth dies, and the survivors split into two sides for a final battle between good and evil. It came out in 1978, and in 1990 King published a longer version that restored the hundreds of pages his publisher had cut. Readers who name it as his best usually say the same thing: no other King book builds a world this large.

The Shining is the one most people know, partly because of Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film. Jack Torrance takes his wife and son to look after the empty Overlook Hotel for the winter, and the hotel slowly takes him over. King has said many times that he did not like the film, and he returned to the story in 2013 with Doctor Sleep, which follows the grown-up Danny Torrance.

It, from 1986, is the one that gave a generation its fear of clowns. Seven children in Derry, Maine, fight a creature that most often appears as Pennywise, then come back as adults 27 years later to finish the job. The 2017 film became one of the most successful horror films ever made. Pet Sematary, from 1983, is the darkest of them: King has said it is the book that frightened him most, and he put it away in a drawer for years before he agreed to publish it.

Two older books are back in the news. The Long Walk is often called the first novel King wrote, as a student, though it came out only in 1979 under his pen name Richard Bachman: a hundred boys walk until only one is left. Its film adaptation reached cinemas in September 2025, and The Running Man, another Bachman book, followed in November. Further back is Carrie, the first novel he published, which he famously threw away before his wife Tabitha took it out of the bin.

And there are the King books that are not horror at all. The Green Mile came out in six small monthly parts in 1996 and became the Tom Hanks film three years later. Misery, a writer held prisoner by his biggest fan, won Kathy Bates an Oscar in the film version, and 11/22/63 sends a teacher back in time to try to stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Is the best Stephen King book the one that scares you most, the one with the biggest story, or the one you read first? Pick The Stand or The Shining above, settle It against Pet Sematary, decide The Long Walk against The Running Man, or see all of the best Stephen King books and the whole Books Top 100, ranked by everyone.

Vote: The Stand vs The Shining

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