'SALEM'S LOT - Stephen King

Look all you want, you won't find another horror novel that works quite as successfully as the one-of-a-kind 'Salem's Lot.  Not only because of its hardcore depiction of vampires as the soulless monsters who feed on the innocence and blood of others - as they were in earliest literature (Edward Cullen, you'd best take your glittering butt elsewhere) - but also because 'Salem's Lot is a raw and very naked novel depicting the sins and wrongdoings those in small-town American often hide behind closed doors.  The subject has long fascinated King as a writer, and it's fully blown up like an A-bomb here; Ben Mears is a fair-to-middlingly successful writer who has returned to Jerusalem's Lot - nicknamed 'Salem's Lot - where he lived for some time as a child, to exorcise the demons of something he witnessed in the old Marsten house.  Instead, he learns of a new owner of the Marsten home, the reclusive, never-seen Mr. Barlow, whose arrival fast becomes a catalyst for ... changes, not just in the town but also in those who inhabit it.  Terrifying and original, 'Salem's Lot goes far beyond a "vampire novel" to make those who read it, who have experienced the underlying "something's not right here" feel of a small town, also confront the potential darkness within the human soul.  *****