
When a charismatic young minister arrives in a small New England town, six-year-old Jamie Morton forms a bond with him that will shadow both their lives for decades. After a shattering tragedy turns the reverend away from faith and toward a private obsession with the secret power of electricity, their paths keep crossing across the years — drawing Jamie, now a drifting musician, deeper into the man's increasingly forbidden experiments. A patient, character-driven descent into faith, addiction, and the hunger to know what lies beyond death.
Significance A late-career Stephen King novel King himself called one of his most frightening, written as an explicit homage to Mary Shelley, Arthur Machen ("The Great God Pan"), and H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror.
Dramatic holographic (reflective foil) wrap-around design: a lightning strike over a mountainside in hues of green, purple and red, with the bold title "REVIVAL" in red and silver and the author name. Reflective/holographic surface shifts color in light — a distinctive first-state jacket feature. Rear panel carries blurb/author photo; spine carries title, author, Scribner imprint.
Art / design: Jacket design by Tal Goretsky (Scribner art department). Holographic/foil wrap-around treatment. Author photo of Stephen King on rear panel/flap (Shane Leonard credited on King's Scribner-era jackets of this period — UNVERIFIED specifically for Revival).
Format: hardcover trade first edition, Scribner (Simon & Schuster), published Nov 11, 2014 (announced Feb 12, 2014). Two targeted web searches found multiple first-edition/first-printing dealer listings (rare book sellers, AbeBooks, Biblio, eBay) and the official stephenking.com first-edition identification guide, but NONE state a specific announced first-printing quantity (number of copies). Modern Scribner King first printings are large (typically six figures) but no authoritative source publishes an exact figure for Revival, so no number is reported here rather than inventing one. First printing is identified by the full number line "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2" on the copyright page (per the stephenking.com guide), not by a stated count. Note: no Donald M. Grant / small-press signed-limited or lettered edition of the Scribner Revival applies to this query (a separate Lividian Publications surfaced in search relates to a different/later King-associated project, not the 2014 Scribner trade first printing). If a precise figure is required, Publishers Weekly trade announcements (Feb 2014) or Simon & Schuster publishing records would be the authoritative place to confirm.
No widely documented errata or first-state/second-state textual point separates first-printing copies of Revival. Identification rests entirely on the dated "First Scribner hardcover edition November 2014" statement plus the complete number line containing "1." UNVERIFIED whether any minor printing variant exists; none is reported by collector sources.
No King-signed limited at first publication. Later: LetterPress Publications (now Lividian Publications) illustrated limited, December 2019 — Signed/Slipcased Limited Edition (~1,500 copies, custom cloth-wrapped slipcase, hot-foil spine) and a Lettered Edition (three-piece leather/cloth binding in a slide-in traycase with gilt edges). Sixteen+ full-color illustrations (incl. fold-outs) by François Vaillancourt; additional film-related artwork by Vincent Chong. Signed by contributors (Josh Booe, Vincent Chong, Bev Vincent) — NOTE: Stephen King did NOT sign these editions. Retail ~$125 (slipcased). No Subterranean Press or Cemetery Dance limited of Revival exists (UNVERIFIED any other publisher limited).
$30–75 (genuine unsigned trade first, full number line, fine/fine unclipped $30 jacket). Signed-in-person firsts: $150–300; PSA/JSA-certified signed firsts: $250–450+
Assumes a genuine first edition / first printing in near-fine to fine condition (clean copy, unclipped jacket). Lesser condition is worth less.
Confirmed sales: Unsigned "Like New" 1st/1st sold ~$20 (eBay sold, 2024–2025); unsigned fine 1st/1st dealer-sold range ~$13–40 (AbeBooks/eBay sold, 2024–2025); signed 1st/1st w/ slipcase asked $999 (eBay, asking — not a clean comp); Letterpress signed/numbered limited (1,500 copies, NOT the trade first) sold ~$275–450 (eBay/stephenkingcollector, 2023–2025). NOTE: no formal Heritage/PBA auction records exist for the ordinary unsigned trade first — it is too common to hammer at auction; figures are dealer + eBay-sold.
Book-club edition (the trap): No true Book-of-the-Month/BCE was issued for Revival in the way older King titles were; the analogous "trap" copies are the trade paperback (~$13–15), the large-print hardcover, and ex-library/clipped firsts — all effectively $5–15. Any of these mislisted as "first edition" should be treated as near-worthless collectibly. — a fraction of a true first; never pay first-edition money for one.
Condition-sensitive but the floor is high-supply: this is a 2014 mega-bestseller, so even fine/fine the unsigned trade first stays modest ($30–75). The value lever is SIGNATURE, not the first-printing point: an in-person signed first roughly 4–6x's the price, and a PSA/JSA-authenticated signed first pushes $250–450+. The single biggest thing separating a real trade first from the mislisted copies of THIS title: it is the Scribner trade hardcover (6.25 x 9.5", $30 jacket, black quarter-cloth over navy boards, silver spine title) with the COMPLETE number line "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2" — the terminal "1" must be present (its removal = later printing). Reject the softcover, the large-print edition, price-clipped jackets, and the Letterpress signed/limited (a different book entirely, not the trade first). There is no Doubleday gutter code on this title — that point belongs to King's 1970s–80s Doubleday books, not Scribner 2014.
Verification notes: Price and number line cross-checked across WebSearch result summaries citing rarebookcellar.com, parigibooks.com, biblio.com/BiblioStax, bookshopapocalypse.com, and Bauman Rare Books, plus the johnatkinsonbooks.co.uk first-US-edition listing — all agree on $30.00 unclipped and the dated First Scribner hardcover edition statement. Binding "half/quarter black cloth" confirmed directly via Bauman Rare Books listing. Limited-edition details confirmed via stephenking.com/works/limited/revival.html and lividian.com. Board-color variance flagged rather than guessed.