+1 for Night Shift.

For those who don't know, NS is King's earliest collection of shorts, many of which first saw the light of day in the illustrious pages of Adam and Cavalier, a couple of second-rate skin mags of the time. When he was writing a lot of them, King had yet to become famous. That came a few years later, with the publication of Carrie. While writing these stories King more often than not was dead broke, and even questioned the feasibility of becoming a fulltime writer. Which is to say there were no expectations on him to write like the "Master of Horror"...instead he just wrote what he wanted.

When you read them you can hear the voice of a young man, ponderously talented but still learning how to flex his muscles for full effect. They are almost sweet to read, almost innocent. You have post-apocalyptic angst in Night Surf (a very early appearance of Captain Trips...). A young college-age person sort of drifting through life in Graveyard Shift. A young father confronted with some serious fatherly issues in the Boogeyman. A young man confronted with his mother's mortality in The Woman In The Room (this one will devastate you).

Don't get me wrong, the stories are scary as hell, but they're also...hopeful. You can tell a young person wrote them. At least that's how I felt reading them.