This companion provides a two-part introduction to best-selling author Stephen King, whose enormous popularity over the years has gained him an audience well beyond readers of horror fiction, the genre with which he is most often associated. Part I considers the reception of King's work, the film adaptations that they gave rise to, the fictional worlds in which some of his novels are set, and the more useful approaches to King's varied corpus. Part II consists of entries for each series, novel, story, screenplay and even poem, including works never published or produced, as well as characters and settings.