Product Description

Thousands of miles away from the small township of 'Salem's Lot, two terrified people, a man and a boy, still share the secrets of those clapboard houses and tree-lined streets. They must return to 'Salem's Lot for a final confrontation with the unspeakable evil that lives on in the town.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21821 in Books
• Published on: 1982-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Stephen King's second book, 'Salem's Lot--about the slow takeover of an insular hamlet called Jerusalem's Lot by a vampire patterned after Bram Stoker's Dracula--has two elements that he also uses to good effect in later novels: a small American town, usually in Maine, where people are disconnected from each other, quietly nursing their potential for evil; and a mixed bag of rational, goodhearted people, including a writer, who band together to fight that evil.

Simply taken as a contemporary vampire novel, 'Salem's Lotis great fun to read, and has been very influential in the horror genre. But it's also a sly piece of social commentary. As King said in 1983, "In 'Salem's Lot, the thing that really scared me was not vampires, but the town in the daytime, the town that was empty, knowing that there were things in closets, that there were people tucked under beds, under the concrete pilings of all those trailers. And all the time I was writing that, the Watergate hearings were pouring out of the TV.... Howard Baker kept asking, 'What I want to know is, what did you know and when did you know it?' That line haunts me, it stays in my mind.... During that time I was thinking about secrets, things that have been hidden and were being dragged out into the light." Sounds quite a bit like the idea behind his 1998 novel of a Maine hamlet haunted by unsightly secrets, Bag of Bones. --Fiona Webster

Frances Fyfield, Express
‘Splendid entertainment...Stephen King is one of those natural storytellers...getting hooked is easy'

Review
‘An incredibly gifted writer, whose writing, like Truman Capote’s, is so fluid that you often forget that you’re reading’ (Guardian )

‘A writer of excellence...King is one of the most fertile storytellers of the modern novel...brilliantly done’ (The Sunday Times )

‘Splendid entertainment...Stephen King is one of those natural storytellers...getting hooked is easy’ (Frances Fyfield, Express )

Customer Reviews

Bedtime Story
I must be weird. Why? Because I like to periodically re-read this book as way of getting to sleep!

It's not because it's boring and soporific; far from it. It's just that I've been reading this book on occasion since I was quite young and it's just a nice, comfortable read for me.

I don't think King has really surpassed this novel (although The Stand comes close). One of the things that gets me most about this book is the atmosphere. It's full of, rather beautiful, Autumnal imagery and, for some reason, reminds me of the autumn days of my youth (there weren't many vampires though!).

It's not perfect by any means, some of the dialogue is painful, but I think it's a brilliant read.

The king of comedy!
Maybe it's just my lack of understanding, but I personally found this novel to be utter garbage. As with Mr King's other famous books, this is about as scary as Noel Edmonds, and is also extremely boring, crude, ill-written, and utterly laughable. Over half of the entire book is taken up with uninteresting and unnecessary talking, none of which builds up the atmosphere or plot, and all of the supposedly frightening scenes are actually woefully inept, feeble and unoriginal. Don't misunderstand me here - Stephen King CAN write well when he wants to (such as in a few of his short stories), but the vast majority of all his works are not done so. Of course, if you've only ever read one or two novels in your life then you'll probably love this one; as for everyone else, I suggest you look elsewhere, preferably somewhere where you'll find less commercialised and more atmospheric horror novels - ones which read as if they're actually written by a professional writer, rather than rubbish written by someone who continually produces mainstream modern trash for the sake of easy money.

A truely Mega 'Byte' Tale of Horror
I once read that Stephen King was to write a sequel to Salems Lot. Whilst I would be first in the queue to buy any attempt of a follow up, Mr. King would have to produce a mammoth effort to match the original which I can safely add is the greatest book I have ever read!