If It Bleeds

 If It Bleeds by Stephen King   436 pages

This is a collection of four long stories, including a stand-alone sequel to The Outsider (which I did read, but remembered almost nothing about). I found the collection to be really good, even without remembering The Outside. Mr. Harrigan's Phone is a bittersweet story that has some disturbing elements to it, but it's more an exploration of a younger self. The Life of Chuck was hard to follow at first, and then I got caught up in the story.  Rat was truly the strangest one -- -I kept expecting something worse to happen, so it kept me on edge.

I enjoy King's later works and find that with each new book, I continue to like his stories. While I read Christine as a kid and some of his other early books, I've never wanted to re-read them, unlike his somewhat more recent work.  Count this one in with the good ones.