Stephen King's vampire novel 'Salem's Lot was first published in 1975. Doubleday released the hardcover edition on October 17, 1975, making it King's second published novel.
The story follows writer Ben Mears, who returns to Jerusalem's Lot, Maine—a town commonly shortened to “‘Salem's Lot.” He soon discovers that the community is being transformed by vampirism after the arrival of the ancient vampire Kurt Barlow and his human associate, Richard Straker.
The book draws heavily on Bram Stoker's Dracula while relocating the vampire story from a distant European setting to a recognizable small town in Maine. That contrast between ordinary community life and supernatural corruption became one of the novel's defining features. King also revisited Jerusalem's Lot in the stories “Jerusalem's Lot” and “One for the Road,” collected in Night Shift in 1978.
Readers sometimes confuse the year with those later related stories, or with one of the novel's television adaptations. The original novel itself dates to 1975.