'Salem's Lot

'Salem's Lot is a horror novel by the American author Stephen King, published in 1975 and his second published book. Its protagonist is Ben Mears, a writer who comes back to Jerusalem's Lot, the Maine town where he grew up, and finds its residents turning into vampires. King has said that of all his books this was his favourite.

Twenty-five years later Ben comes back to write about the Marsten House, standing empty since long before, and about the bad experience he had there as a boy. He befriends Matt Burke, a high school teacher, and becomes involved with Susan Norton, a young college graduate with plans to leave. The novel opens with the arrival of a new owner at the Marsten House and the first deaths in the Lot.

The town explains the early deaths as accidents, and Ben gathers the few people willing to believe him. They set out to deal with what has taken the town, which means working out where the vampires rest during the day and who among their neighbours has already changed. King writes the town itself as a character, with its own history and its own reasons for not noticing.

'One for the Road' and 'Jerusalem's Lot' are two short stories set in the same town. The novel made the World Fantasy Award shortlist in 1976 and a Locus Award shortlist in 1987, and it is a standalone story rather than part of a series.