Stephen King Surprises Fans With a Brand-New Short Story that You Can Read Right Now
Stephen King fans woke up this week to an unexpected gift. The author published a new short story, 'Dinah's Hat,' in the June 2026 issue ofThe Atlantic, No announcement, no promotional buildup, just a new King story sitting there for readers to find.
The 6,000-word story is available in The Atlantic's June issue and can be read online with a subscription or a 30-day free trial.
For longtime readers, the setting alone is a small surprise. King trades in his signature New England backdrop for coastal Florida, using the change of scenery to dig into a family's dark secret. Maine has been King's spiritual home since Carriein 1974. It's where Derry, Castle Rock, and Jerusalem's Lot all exist, so the Florida setting goes in a different direction. It's not unprecedented. His 2024 collection You Like It Darker included 'Rattlesnakes,' in which a grieving widower travels to Florida for relief and instead receives an unexpected inheritance with major strings attached. The Sunshine State, it seems, keeps pulling at him.
Related: Stephen King Ruled Horror Every Year of the '90s - Except One
King's short fiction has always operated as its own separate universe within his larger work. His first collection, Night Shift (1978), leaned toward stories of individuals going mad or undergoing transformations, while Skeleton Crew (1985) tilted toward monsters. Over decades, the stories accumulated into a body of work that rivals his novels in cultural impact including 'The Mist,' 'Children of the Corn,' and 'The Body' (the basis for Stand by Me) all began as short fiction. You Like It Darker, published in May 2024, debuted at number one on The New York Times fiction best-seller list and won the Goodreads Choice Award for Horror.
If 'Dinah's Hat' is any indication, another short story collection could follow. King has never been someone who lets raw material sit in a drawer. Stories published in magazines such as Playboy, Cavalier, Omni, and now The Atlantic, have historically served as the seeds of his collections, and the pattern here fits.
In the meantime, King's next scheduled book is considerably larger in scope. Other Worlds Than These, the final entry in the Talisman trilogy co-created with the late Peter Straub, is set for publication on October 6, 2026, by Scribner, running 624 pages. Straub died in 2022, and King wrote the novel alone but using material Straub had prepared. An excerpt from the book ran in Esquirein February 2026. The novel follows Jack Sawyer facing a nearly impossible task: stopping a wave of violent, infected teenagers while simultaneously confronting a force called the Gullet at the edge of Mid-World, connecting directly to King's Dark Tower saga.
But for now, 'Dinah's Hat' is the story in front of readers (and online), and The Atlantic's June issue is on newsstands now.
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This story was originally published May 20, 2026 at 4:42 AM.