The M.D. - A Horror Story

The M.D.: A Horror Story (1991) is the second of Thomas M. Disch's horror novels set in suburban Minnesota. Billy Michaels, as a young boy, strikes a bargain with the god Mercury and receives a caduceus that gives him absolute power over health and disease: he can heal, and he can harm. The novel follows Billy across decades as his understanding of that power grows more deliberate and his use of it more catastrophic. Disch frames the story as a morality tale in the tradition of Faustian literature, though the suburban American setting and the institutional targets, Catholic school, the medical establishment, the nuclear family, give it a distinctly contemporary edge. Stephen King called it "simply one of the best novels of horror-fantasy I've ever read" and cited the book's moral seriousness as the source of its power. 

Inscribed copy. This copy is signed and inscribed by Disch on the title page.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth-covered boards. New York: Knopf, 1991. ISBN: 039458662x. #10135.
Fine in fine dust jacket.