"YOU HOLD IN YOUR HANDS A WORLD OF HURT": SIGNED LIMITED EDITION OF BOOK OF THE DEAD, ONE OF 500 COPIES SIGNED BY THE CONTRIBUTORS, INCLUDING STEPHEN KING

(KING, Stephen) SKIPP, John and SPECTOR, Craig, editors. Book of the Dead. Willimantic, Connecticut: Mark V. Ziesing, 1989. Octavo, original black cloth gilt, patterned endpapers, original dust jacket, original illustrated slipcase. $1400.

Signed limited first edition of this anthology of zombie fiction, number 474 of 500 specially bound copies signed by the editors and 16 contributors, including Stephen King.

"You hold in your hands a world of hurt: a psychic neutron bomb disguised as a bunch of zombie stories, able to vaporize the conventions of a genre while leaving the glory and terror intact. You hold in your hands a universe of grisly possibility, replete with all of the hope and humanity supportable by such a place. Not bad for a book of zombie stories" (Introduction). This anthology contains the first appearance of King's short story "Home Delivery," described by George Beahm as "quintessential King" (Stephen King from A to Z: an Encyclopedia of His Life and Work); other contributors include Richard Laymon, Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale and Robert R. McCammon. George Romero, director of the landmark 1968 zombie film Night of the Living Dead, provided the foreword (with printed facsimile signature) to this collection that anointed his zombies as "the official icons of splatterpunk fiction" (Dziemianowicz, Fantasy and Horror). With seven full-page black-and-white illustrations and small decorative chapter headings. Also issued in a paperback edition and an unsigned hardcover edition in the same year. Brooks B114.1. Fantasy and Horror 6-453.

Book and dust jacket very nearly fine with only the slightest traces of wear to spine ends. A bright, clean signed copy.