Skeleton Crew
By Stephen King
 
First edition, first impression: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1985.

Original quarter black cloth over dark grey boards, the spine lettered in gilt with the publisher's name at the foot, the author's signature reproduced in gilt to the upper board. Original pictorial dust jacket designed by One Plus One Studio and illustrated by Don Brautigam, unclipped and priced $18.95; author photograph by James Leonard to the rear panel.

A near fine copy, the binding firm with bright gilt, with a couple of solitary spots to the edges and a hint of rubbing to the spine foot; the contents clean and fresh throughout.

The jacket very good and unclipped, with a couple of tiny nicks to the edges and a crease running along the upper and lower flaps. Brautigam's clockwork cymbal-monkey - the totem of "The Monkey," green-eyed and grinning against a black ground - remains sharp and unfaded, the white lettering clean.

King's second collection of short fiction, following Night Shift (1978), gathering nineteen stories, two poems, and the novella "The Mist," and winner of the Locus Award for Best Collection in 1986. "The Reach," first printed in Yankee as "Do the Dead Sing?", won the 1982 World Fantasy Award for short fiction. "The Mist" was filmed by Frank Darabont in 2007 and serialised in 2017; "The Monkey" was filmed by Osgood Perkins in 2025; "The Raft" appeared in Creepshow 2 (1987), and "Gramma" was adapted by Harlan Ellison for the revived The Twilight Zone in 1985. The copyright page carries the note that "a limited first edition of this book has been published by Scream/Press" - the Scream/Press issue, 1,000 copies illustrated by J. K. Potter and carrying the additional story "The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson".