#160 in Horror
Bag of Bones
- 608
- Pages
- about 11 h
- Reading time
- Bram Stoker Award for Novel
- Locus Award for Best Horror Novel
- August Derleth Award
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Our view
“Bag of Bones” is as much a novel of grief as a ghost story: a widowed writer, a creative block and an isolated house by a lake. Readers often find it slow to get going and longer than it needs to be. The plot threads do tie together in the end, and the supernatural side convinces some while striking others as too implausible.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Bag of Bones is a 1998 horror novel by American writer Stephen King. It focuses on an author who suffers severe writer's block and delusions at an isolated lake house four years after the death of his wife. It won the 1999 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, the 1999 British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and the 1999 Locus Award for Best Dark Fantasy/Horror Novel.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.4 across 367 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 71% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Horror average of 7.5. That is how 7.4 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.7 | 38 | 10% |
| Hardcover | 7.4 | 329 | 90% |
Frequently asked
How long is Bag of Bones?
It has 608 pages — longer than 85% of the ranked books in Horror.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Horror — and a score of 7.4, the closest to this book.
