10 Stephen King Stories That Haven't Been Adapted Yet (But Should)
2. Joyland
Joyland is another in a long line of late-era King novels that elevates a simple story with a grasp of character and emotion that leaves you reeling, with its horror secondary to the hopeful worldview and humanity the author captures even in the darkest of times.
The story of a lovelorn young man who starts working at a small amusement park, befriending a secretive woman and her son and learning about a local ghost story, Joyland is an economically paced novel about love and heartbreak and companionship, with just a dash of murder for good measure.
Devastating and deeply moving, the story pulls the rug from under you repeatedly, crafting a bracing mystery around one man's desire to move on from past hardships and find himself. King has always had a knack for this - emotionally resonant stories with a gripping edge of violence and ghouls - and Joyland is one of his finest recent achievements in that regard. As a movie? It's positively dynamite.