It's a long time since I read a book of short stories, and I must say I really enjoyed this one. OK, so the 14 Dark Tales extolled on the cover aren't all dark - in fact, some of them are so un-dark that they're positively shrivelling up in the midday sun - but that doesn't detract at all from their worth. Some tales are long, some are short, and as in any book of short stories some are more fulfilling than others.

The title story, Everything's Eventual, is my favourite; the tale of a young man with an extraordinary gift. There's also 1408 about a haunted hotel room, and the 'e-Book sensation' Riding The Bullet.

In the introduction Stephen King writes about how the art of short story writing is being lost because there are fewer and fewer places to get them published. That would be a shame if it were true. He also says he writes at least one short story a year as a way of keeping his hand in, so to speak. So from the great Stephen King we have the haunted hotel room story, the devil appears to young boy story, the paralysed man wakes up in the autopsy room story, the loneliness of the travelling salesman in a motel room story, the demon-possessed portrait story, and the classic hitchhiker gets picked up by ghost of dead driver story. All in all an interesting collection, and a pleasant diversion from the land of novel reading.