Titles in this Set: 1. If It Bleeds2. The Institute3. IT4. Misery5. Pet Sematary Description: If It BleedsNews people have a saying: ‘If it bleeds, it leads’. Following a horrific explosion at a school, Holly Gibney of the Finders Keepers detective agency notices something suspicious about the TV reporter who is first on the scene. In this riveting title story, Holly sets out to discover what he is hiding in her first solo crime case. Dancing alongside this stand-alone sequel to The Outsider are three more irresistible long stories: ‘Mr Harrigan’s Phone’ sees young Craig introduce a curmudgeonly retired businessman to the wonders of the smartphone; ‘The Life of Chuck’ is a three act life-story – told in reverse order – about a man whose face appears on a billboard; and ‘Rat’ sees a struggling author head to a remote cabin in the woods of North Maine, where a deal-making rodent offers him a life-changing pact. The InstituteDeep in the woods of Maine, there is a dark state facility where kids, abducted from across the United States, are incarcerated. In the Institute they are subjected to a series of tests and procedures meant to combine their exceptional gifts – telepathy, telekinesis – for concentrated effect. Luke Ellis is the latest recruit. He’s just a regular 12-year-old, except he’s not just smart, he’s super-smart. And he has another gift which the Institute wants to use… Far away in a small town in South Carolina, former cop Tim Jamieson has taken a job working for the local sheriff. He’s basically just walking the beat. But he’s about to take on the biggest case of his career. Back in the Institute’s downtrodden playground and corridors where posters advertise ‘just another day in paradise’, Luke, his friend Kalisha and the other kids are in no doubt that they are prisoners, not guests. And there is no hope of escape. But great events can turn on small hinges and Luke is about to team up with a new, even younger recruit, Avery Dixon, whose ability to read minds is off the scale. While the Institute may want to harness their powers for covert ends, the combined intelligence of Luke and Avery is beyond anything that even those who run the experiments – even the infamous Mrs Sigsby – suspect. ITWe all float down here. Derry, Maine is just an ordinary town: familiar, well-ordered for the most part, a good place to live. It is a group of children who see - and feel - what makes Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurks, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. Sometimes IT appears as an evil clown named Pennywise and sometimes IT reaches up, seizing, tearing, killing . . . Time passes and the children grow up, move away and forget. Until they are called back, once more to confront IT as IT stirs and coils in the sullen depths of their memories, emerging again to make their past nightmares a terrible present reality. MiseryPaul Sheldon used to write for a living. Now he’s writing to stay alive. Misery Chastain is dead. Paul Sheldon has just killed her – with relief, with joy. Misery made him rich; she was the heroine of a string of bestsellers. And now he wants to get on to some real writing. That’s when the car accident happens, and he wakes up splinted and in pain, in the remote mountain home of his rescuer, Annie Wilkes. The good news is that Annie was a nurse and has pain-killing drugs. The bad news is that she has long been Paul’s Number One Fan. And when she finds out what Paul has done to Misery, she doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like it at all . . . Pet Sematary‘SOMETIMES…DEAD IS BETTER’ The house looked right, felt right to Dr Louis Creed. Rambling, old, unsmart and comfortable. A place where the family could settle; the children grow and play and explore. The rolling hills and meadows of Maine seemed a world away from the fume-choked dangers of Chicago. Only the occasional big truck out on the two-lane highway, grinding up through the gears, hammering down the long gradients, growled out an intrusive threat. But behind the house and far away from the road: that was safe. Just a carefully cleared path up into the woods where generations of local children have processed with the solemn innocence of the young, taking with them their dear departed pets for burial. A sad place maybe, but safe. Surely a safe place. Not a place to seep into your dreams, to wake you, sweating with fear and foreboding.