ROADWORK (First Edition, 1981)

New York: Signet, 1981

12mo, 247pp. Softcover binding, with black lettering to spine and covers, and full-colour illustrations to front cover. First edition, first printing.

Roadwork is a thriller novel by American writer Stephen King, published in 1981 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman as a paperback original. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books. The story takes place in an unnamed city of the Midwestern United States in 1972–1974. Grieving over the death of his son and the disintegration of his marriage, a man is driven to mental instability when he learns that both his home and his workplace will be demolished to make way for an extension to an interstate highway. In the introduction to The Bachman Books, King stated: "I think it was an effort to make some sense of my mother's painful death the year before – a lingering cancer had taken her off inch by painful inch. Following this death I was left both grieving and shaken by the apparent senselessness of it all... Roadwork tries so hard to be good and find some answers to the conundrum of human pain." (wikipedia.com)

Condition: Very good. Light rubbing to covers, small stain from old price sticker on rear cover, spots of light creasing to covers. Light rubbing and small line to spine. Very light stains to fore edges of last few pages. Text is clean. Copy is tightly bound.