Loved reading this. King is one of the authors I return to time and again and re-reread on a regular basis — and I’m not really a horror fan. What I love about his writing is some of what you’ve highlighted above, where he gets into the meat of what makes us human. In just a few words or sentences, he can get right down to the bare-knuckle of something (or someone) and I’m nodding along because I recognise what he’s painting with his words even when the character’s story is way out of my sphere of experience (thankfully in most cases!).

Recommending is hard because there’s so many I love and you’ve clearly read a fair few. Rita Heyworth and the Shawshank Redemption is one of my favs (plus I love what they did with the movie and how they adapted Red for Morgan Freeman to play and yet Freeman completely captured Red’s voice). The Green Mile gets me every time.

Have you read Apt Pupil? I found it darker than some of his supernatural stuff. The Running Man is good although the movie based on it (Schwarzenegger) was very different from the book (still good though). The Dead Zone is another favourite.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is short by King standards and I never thought I could enjoy a book with baseball as its reference — I’m neither American nor a sports fan — but that one really got me.