Far from sunset

In this work, Stephen King presents a remarkable collection of short stories, the first after his last collection "Everything Ends" which was published six years ago, and the story N - one of the longest stories in this book - gained a new important dimension when it was recently turned into a lively digital graphic show consisting of twenty-five illustrated episodes. It is published here for the first time, while the other stories were written at different times and have diverse themes, some of which possess great qualities of imagination, as in the story "Willa," which gives the writer a chance to imagine what could happen (or not happen) after life. There are two stories of this kind in "Beyond Sunset" (the other story is "New York Times at Negotiable Price"). In it, the author says: we all remain after death. It is sad that such complex and sometimes wonderful creatures are simply dissipated in the end, and thrown like trash on the side of the road, (...) and my best hope is that love remains even after death (I'm romantic, so sue me)... As for the story "Runaway Girl," the story developed in the author’s mind from a very simple basis: a wicked man chasing a girl along an empty beach. But I thought — says the author — that she is fleeing from something first. And that’s where the title came from, the runaway girl. Then comes the story "Deaf" after the author read a story in a local newspaper about a high school secretary who embezzled more than sixty-five thousand dollars to play the lottery. The first question that came to his mind — as he says — was "about how her husband felt about this," so he wrote this story to find out. "It reminds me of the toxic candies I used to take weekly as samples while watching the program 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents'." As for the story "Aiyana," it is another tale the author wrote following a near-fatal accident in 1999, then he asked himself: if my position had been different by just a few centimeters (or, conversely, if my position had been different by a few centimeters), I might have survived completely. If a person survives, we say "this is a miracle." And if they die, we say "this is God's will." There is no logical understanding of miracles... but miracles happen, it seems to me; every breath is another miracle. True, the answer is fragile, but it’s not always dark. I didn’t want to write about answers, but I wanted to write about questions, and suggest that miracles might be a burden as well as a blessing. And maybe it’s just empty nonsense. But I love stories." This is how Stephen King is unlike others; he can turn a portable toilet into a slimy birth, or a roadside café into a place for eternal love.