Listen free for 30 days
-
Desperation
- Narrated by: Stephen King
- Length: 21 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Thriller & Suspense
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Buy Now for £24.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Regulators
- By: Stephen King, Richard Bachman
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wentworth, Ohio: a small, friendly town where the Carver children bicker over sweets in the E-Z shop and writer Johnny Marinville is the only resident who minds his own business. On Poplar Street, apart from the impending storm, it's just a normal summer's day - with Frisbees flying, lawn mowers humming and barbeques grilling. As the paperboy makes his round, he is unaware of the chrome-red van idling up the hill....
-
-
Listen to this book but get Desperation first.
- By mustangclaire on 13-05-17
-
Needful Things
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Stephen King
- Length: 25 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There was a new shop in town. Run by a stranger. Needful Things, the sign said. The oddest name. A name that caused some gossip and speculation among the good folks of Castle Rock, Maine, while they waited for opening day. Eleven-year-old Brian Rusk was the first customer and he got just what he wanted, a very rare 1956 Sandy Koufax baseball card. Signed. Cyndi Rose Martin was next. A Lalique vase. A perfect match for her living room decor. Something for everyone.
-
-
The music ruins it massively.
- By Benjamin Wearden on 22-08-20
-
The Tommyknockers
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Edward Herrmann
- Length: 27 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everything is familiar. But everything has changed. Coming back to the little community is like walking into a nightmare for Jim Gardener, poet, drunk, potential suicide. It all looks the same: the house; the furniture; Jim's friend, Bobbi; her beagle (though ageing); even the woods out at the back. But it was in the woods that Bobbi stumbled over the odd, part-buried object and felt a peculiar tingle as she brushed the soft earth away. Everything is familiar. But everything is about to change.
-
-
This book is awful, but don't take my word for it.
- By Amazon Customer on 08-11-20
-
Billy Summers
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Paul Sparks
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong? How about everything.
-
-
Steve - you nailed it!
- By Mr E Mortimore on 04-08-21
-
Insomnia
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Eli Wallach
- Length: 25 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You'll lose a lot of sleep.... Ralph does. At first he starts waking up earlier. And earlier. Then the hallucinations start - the colours, shapes and strange auras. Not to mention the bald doctors who always turn up at the scene of a death. That's when Ralph begins to lose a lot more than sleep. When he begins to understand why his hitherto mild-mannered friend, Ed, is getting out of control - dangerously so. And why his hometown is about to become the new Armageddon....
-
-
Annoying music!
- By Puddytat purr on 11-10-16
-
Duma Key
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: John Slattery
- Length: 21 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A man discovers an incredible talent for painting after a freak accident in which he loses an arm. He moves to a "new life" in Duma Key, off Florida's West Coast - a deserted strip, part beach, part weed-tangled reef, owned by a patroness of the arts whose twin sisters went missing in the 1920s. Here, Freemantle is inspired to paint the amazing sunsets. But soon the paintings become predictive, even dangerous.
-
-
Duma
- By Seamus on 15-10-08
-
The Regulators
- By: Stephen King, Richard Bachman
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wentworth, Ohio: a small, friendly town where the Carver children bicker over sweets in the E-Z shop and writer Johnny Marinville is the only resident who minds his own business. On Poplar Street, apart from the impending storm, it's just a normal summer's day - with Frisbees flying, lawn mowers humming and barbeques grilling. As the paperboy makes his round, he is unaware of the chrome-red van idling up the hill....
-
-
Listen to this book but get Desperation first.
- By mustangclaire on 13-05-17
-
Needful Things
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Stephen King
- Length: 25 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There was a new shop in town. Run by a stranger. Needful Things, the sign said. The oddest name. A name that caused some gossip and speculation among the good folks of Castle Rock, Maine, while they waited for opening day. Eleven-year-old Brian Rusk was the first customer and he got just what he wanted, a very rare 1956 Sandy Koufax baseball card. Signed. Cyndi Rose Martin was next. A Lalique vase. A perfect match for her living room decor. Something for everyone.
-
-
The music ruins it massively.
- By Benjamin Wearden on 22-08-20
-
The Tommyknockers
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Edward Herrmann
- Length: 27 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everything is familiar. But everything has changed. Coming back to the little community is like walking into a nightmare for Jim Gardener, poet, drunk, potential suicide. It all looks the same: the house; the furniture; Jim's friend, Bobbi; her beagle (though ageing); even the woods out at the back. But it was in the woods that Bobbi stumbled over the odd, part-buried object and felt a peculiar tingle as she brushed the soft earth away. Everything is familiar. But everything is about to change.
-
-
This book is awful, but don't take my word for it.
- By Amazon Customer on 08-11-20
-
Billy Summers
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Paul Sparks
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong? How about everything.
-
-
Steve - you nailed it!
- By Mr E Mortimore on 04-08-21
-
Insomnia
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Eli Wallach
- Length: 25 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You'll lose a lot of sleep.... Ralph does. At first he starts waking up earlier. And earlier. Then the hallucinations start - the colours, shapes and strange auras. Not to mention the bald doctors who always turn up at the scene of a death. That's when Ralph begins to lose a lot more than sleep. When he begins to understand why his hitherto mild-mannered friend, Ed, is getting out of control - dangerously so. And why his hometown is about to become the new Armageddon....
-
-
Annoying music!
- By Puddytat purr on 11-10-16
-
Duma Key
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: John Slattery
- Length: 21 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A man discovers an incredible talent for painting after a freak accident in which he loses an arm. He moves to a "new life" in Duma Key, off Florida's West Coast - a deserted strip, part beach, part weed-tangled reef, owned by a patroness of the arts whose twin sisters went missing in the 1920s. Here, Freemantle is inspired to paint the amazing sunsets. But soon the paintings become predictive, even dangerous.
-
-
Duma
- By Seamus on 15-10-08
-
Dreamcatcher
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Jeffrey DeMunn
- Length: 22 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes howlingly funny, a story of invasion and battle, survival and heroism. It is a story of how men remember ... and how they love. In Derry, Maine, four young boys once stood together and did a brave thing. Something that changed them in ways they hardly understand. A quarter of a century later, the boys are men who have gone their separate ways. Though they still get together once a year, to go hunting in the north woods of Maine.
-
-
Listen up
- By MsRanPan on 29-12-12
-
It
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Steven Weber
- Length: 44 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine, was just their hometown: familiar, well ordered for the most part. A good place to live. It was the children who saw - and felt - what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. Sometimes IT reached up, seizing, tearing, killing....
-
-
Best Audio Book
- By Goldust22 on 17-07-19
-
The Outsider
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 18 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When an 11-year-old boy is found murdered, forensic evidence and reliable eyewitnesses undeniably point to the town's popular Little League coach. But the jailed suspect, arrested in a public spectacle, has an alibi, and further research convinces Detective Ralph Anderson that the coach was indeed out of town. So how can he have been in two places at the same time?
-
-
Bad Narration
- By grace on 06-09-18
-
Mr Mercedes
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 14 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Described as 'the best thriller of the year' Sunday Express, the No. 1 bestseller introduces retired cop Bill Hodges in a race against time to apprehend a killer. A cat-and-mouse suspense thriller featuring Bill Hodges, a retired cop who is tormented by 'the Mercedes massacre', a case he never solved. Brady Hartsfield, perpetrator of that notorious crime, has sent Hodges a taunting letter.
-
-
King on form yet again
- By T on 04-10-14
-
Rose Madder
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Blair Brown
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Roused by a single drop of blood, Rosie Daniels wakes up to the chilling realisation that her husband is going to kill her. And she takes flight - with his credit card. Alone in a strange city, Rosie begins to build a new life: she meets Bill Steiner and she finds an odd junk shop painting, Rose Madder, which strangely seems to want her as much as she wants it.
-
-
Surprisingly 'unturnoffable'. Very well read
- By Paula on 13-04-11
-
Skeleton Crew
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Dana Ivey, David Morse, Frances Sternhagen, and others
- Length: 22 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hold tight. We are going into a number of dark places, but I think I know the way. Just don't let go of my arm.... Unrivalled master of suspense Stephen King takes the unsuspecting listener on a fantastic journey through the dark shadows of our innermost fears.
-
-
Mixed bag, but worth revisiting
- By 451 on 12-09-16
-
The Dead Zone
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: James Franco
- Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Johnny Smith. A young man whose streak of luck ends dramatically in a major car crash. Followed by blackness. A long, long time in cold limbo. When he wakes up, life has been turned upside down. His fiancée has met someone else. And Johnny is cursed with the power to perceive evil in men's souls. He's had these hunches since he had an ice-skating accident as a child. Now he has an ability to see into the future. An ability which will bring him into a terrifying confrontation with a charismatic, power-hungry and dangerous man....
-
-
First King book for me and I loved it
- By Science geek on 02-02-18
-
The Institute
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Santino Fontana
- Length: 18 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deep 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....
-
-
Another winner from The Master!
- By Kirsty on 17-09-19
-
The Shining
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Campbell Scott
- Length: 15 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Danny is only five years old, but in the words of old Mr Hallorann he is a 'shiner', aglow with psychic voltage. When his father becomes caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, Danny's visions grow out of control. As winter closes in and blizzards cut them off, the hotel seems to develop a life of its own. It is meant to be empty. So who is the lady in Room 217, and who are the masked guests going up and down in the elevator? And why do the hedges shaped like animals seem so alive?
-
-
A classic horror novel
- By Steve on 03-10-13
-
The Stand
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 47 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First came the days of the plague. Then came the dreams. Dark dreams that warned of the coming of the dark man. The apostate of death, his worn-down boot heels tramping the night roads. The warlord of the charnel house and Prince of Evil. His time is at hand. His empire grows in the west and the Apocalypse looms. For hundreds of thousands of fans who read The Stand in its original version and wanted more, this new edition is Stephen King's gift.
-
-
a key Stephen King title
- By karen on 13-08-12
-
Bag of Bones
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Stephen King
- Length: 21 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Mike Noonan's wife dies unexpectedly, the bestselling author suffers from writer's block. Until he is drawn to his summer home, the beautiful lakeside retreat called Sara Laughs. Here Mike finds the once familiar town in the tyrannical grip of millionaire Max Devore. Devore is hell-bent on getting custody of his deceased son's daughter and is twisting the fabric of the community to this purpose. Three year old Kyra and her young mother turn to Mike for help. And Mike finds them increasingly irresistible.
-
-
Perfect! Well read and a great story.
- By Paula on 17-09-16
-
The Dark Half
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 15 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The sparrows are flying again. The idea - unbidden, inexplicable - haunts the edge of Thad Beaumont's mind. Thad should be happy. For years now it is his secret persona, George Stark, author of superviolent pulp thrillers, who has paid the family bills. But now Thad is writing seriously again under his own name, and his menacing pseudonym has been buried forever. And yet...the sparrows are flying again, and something is terribly wrong in Thad Beaumont's world.
-
-
great
- By Gambino on 27-08-16
Summary
Welcome to Desperation.
Once a thriving copper-mining town in the middle of the Nevada desert, Desperation is now eerily abandoned. It's the last place that travellers like the Carver family, bound for vacation, and writer Johnny Marinville, astride his Harley, would expect to be stopped and charged. But Desperation still has a local cop - a unique regulator who patrols the wilderness highway.
The secrets buried in Desperation are as terrifying as the forces summoned to encounter them. A terrifying transformation is taking place, and the travellers will soon discover the true meaning of desperation....
More from the same
What listeners say about Desperation
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Glen
- 21-07-17
AMAZING
such an amazing book by an amazing author.
He reads it with such passion and really paints the picture in your mind.
I have listens to this 3 times now and it still hasn't got boring. pick up extra bits of emotion every listen
16 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kevin Wood
- 06-09-17
Chilling and grizzly
Beautifully read by the author. A twisting, turning tale that will keep you totally riveted.
14 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- T Smart
- 28-01-18
Blood soaked joy
Loved every second of this brutal classic. Read it when I was a teenager and it's as powerful now as it was then.
Only problem I had with reading are SK's glottal 'Ls'!. There's a glot of times that gletter is used. Gloved it tho!
10 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jo
- 15-02-18
I usually love anything by Stephen King.....
Desperation was a struggle. I couldn't really get into it at all which is unusual for me.
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Sharon
- 19-01-18
Awesome!!!
I love King! He always takes me with him and I never fail to understand.
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Gregory Sutherland
- 11-03-17
Z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z
Usually love Stephen King novels, this one was a snooze feature. Narration added nothing to experience.
10 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Enid
- 10-02-17
a rare treat up to his usual excellent standard
a dream or should I say nightmare !!...told by
the man himself .The gory ,supernatural and shocking storyline chills you with unexpected twists and turns.what a delight
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jason
- 11-10-16
top class
Steven king doing what he does best, Americana and horror. I can feel a sequel coming on!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- ButterflyBaby
- 29-08-16
Stephen King at his best
This is my favourite type of King story. Supernatural elements forming the basis for an evolving mystery but also a character drama where relationships shift and change under pressure!
9 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Andrew Spencer
- 29-08-16
Just a gentle road trip!!?
What a fantastic tale. The interwoven spiritual theme intertwined with the violence that unfolds is absolutely brilliant. It makes you shudder but unable to resist the next passage.
9 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Anonymous User
- 20-05-22
Absolutely awesome
Great book, Stephen was a great narrator, couldn’t put it down, loved it, to the end 👍
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Dean
- 03-03-21
STEEEEPPHHHEEEENNNNNN !!!
Dear Stephen,
I am a lifelong fan of your fantastic writing .
I'll say this : Apart from your 'On Writing' ( which is also excellent ) , you should NEVER narrate one of your own books EVER AGAIN .
Thanks , the world .
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Gareth
- 27-10-16
Great read by the horror and supernatural master!
Great Stephen King novel. Sometimes predictable but enough suspense and twists to keep you listening. I've been a King fan since I picked up my first, and this did not disappoint. Really enjoyed listening to it narrated by the author himself as it seems to add another aspect to the book. You really get the impression that the author has enjoyed reading his work as much as writing it.