Re: Stephen King: Hack or Artist?
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Would you mind giving us your top 5 or top 10 non-hardcore-horror pieces that he has written, in order of preference?
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A slight problem you're going to have with Stephen King is that, in general, his older stuff is better than his newer (blame author burnout, his accident, stopping drugs, whatever). However, his older stuff I imagine is what you'd more classify as "hardcore horror" than the newer.
You might be best-served with his short (and not-so-short) story collections -- if a story gets to be outside your liking, it's easy enough to flip to the next tale without chucking the book.
In this spirit, off the top of my head, I'd recommend: Four Past Midnight, Nightmares & Dreamscapes, and Everything's Eventual.
Stand is his best book in my opinion, but since you've already read that, why not check out Green Mile -- there's a "book club" going for it as well in this very forum.
Hearts in Atlantis is one of my other favorites of his that would fall into the kind you want. A warning: I oftentimes hear bad things about this book ... but I really liked it. It isn't as universally loved as Stand, though.
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