Conversely, the novellas, which did not deal (primarily) with the supernatural, were very difficult to publish as there was not a mass market for "straight" fiction stories in the 25,000- to 35,000-word format.

Red insinuates that Andy eventually paid off the prison guards to beat up the leader of the rape gang, Bog Diamond.

Norton denies Andy’s request, stating he is far too valuable as an asset and that he knows too much since he aided the administration in money laundering.

Four years after his time in solitary confinement, Andy confronts Red and tells him about his pseudonym- “Peter Stevens”.

They discover that he had used his rock hammer to create a hole in the prison wall through which he could escape and had hidden it behind the poster he hung up in his cell.

Nine months after his escape, Red receives a blank postcard from McNary, Texas, and assumes that it is from Andy and that he has successfully crossed the border.

The story opens with Todd as he arrives at the doorstep of an elderly German immigrant, named Auther Denker, and accuses him of being Nazi war criminal Kurt Dussander.

Eventually, his school’s guidance counselor Ed French, requests to meet with Todd and his parents to discuss his failing grades.

Todd’s grades begin to improve and he decides he no longer has any need of Dussander and plots to kill him and make it seem like it was an accident.

Similarly to Todd, Dussander has also begun to have nightmares and kills homeless people to relieve them, burying the bodies in his basement.

French confronts Todd, showing him a newspaper clipping describing Dussander’s death and his true identity.

In 1960, Gordie and his three friends − Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp and Vern Tessio − learn that a gang of hooligans led by John "Ace" Merrill have accidentally discovered the dead body of a missing boy named Ray Brower, who was hit by a train.

Over the course of the narrative, the adult Gordie recalls his first published story, Stud City, about the life of a simple man named Edward "Chico" May whose older brother also died.

While at a resting point, Gordie tells his friends another story, "The Revenge of Lard-Ass Hogan", in which the titular Davie "Lard-Ass" Hogan exacts vengeance on the town locals for ridiculing his wide girth by downing a whole bottle of castor oil before engaging in the town's annual pie-eating contest and vomiting on the previous year's champion, which causes a chain reaction that nauseates the entire audience.

The body of Ray Brower was discovered to be mangled by the train while attempting to escape the locomotive's path.

In the present day, Gordie tells how he learned of Chris's death after he was fatally stabbed while trying to stop an argument in a restaurant, about the deaths of Vern and Teddy (in a house fire and car accident respectively), about his successful writing career, and about his recent visit to Castle Rock, where he found that Ace has become an alcoholic and a worker at the town's mill.

At the invitation of a senior partner, he joins a strange gentlemen's club where the members, in addition to reading, chatting and playing billiards and chess, like to tell stories, some of which range into the bizarre and macabre.

One Thursday before Christmas, the elderly physician Dr. Emlyn McCarron tells a story about an episode that took place early in his long and varied career: that of a patient, Sandra Stansfield, who was determined to give birth to her illegitimate child, no matter what, despite financial problems and social disapproval.

Her lungs in her decapitated body are still pumping air, as her head, some feet away, is working to sustain the breathing method so that the baby can be born.

On a sweet but haunting end note, Sandra whispers "Thank you"—her severed head mouthing the words, which are distortedly heard from the throat jutting from her headless body.

The second episode of the seventh season of the 2016 American television series Billions featured a copy of the book in the possession of a prisoner character played by Clancy Brown.

Brown played a sadistic prison guard in the 1994 movie adaptation of Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.