The Curse of Salem

Jerusalem's Lot is a quiet little town in New England. But beneath its old-world exterior lies an evil just waiting to be awakened. Everyone is hiding something; everyone has a stain on their soul. The priest, Father Callahan, drinks uncontrollably and no longer believes in God. Seventeen-year-old Sandy McDougall beats her one-year-old child when he misbehaves. Bonnie Sawyer is unfaithful to her husband with practically everyone she meets. And to top it all off, the abandoned and haunted Marsten House overlooks the town from a hill, and someone has suddenly started living there. And nobody has any idea that apocalyptic doom is coming from that very place in the form of a vampire, Mr Barlow, and his assistant, Straker. Least of all, the average thriller writer Ben Mears, who returns to 'Salem after many years to find his lost peace.

King's early novel, 'Salem's Lot, builds a suffocating atmosphere of horror gradually and at a hypnotically slow pace. Don't expect a happy ending, don't expect a clear division between good and evil, because the worst evil for man is not a supernatural being, but man himself.

Now with a foreword by Joe Hill.