Night of the Living Dead by John Russo

If you can find this novelization of the movie, and for a good price, you are very fortunate, I've been looking for about 2 years, finally found one that wasn't $35 or more, and...wow. On one hand it's a lot like the movie (of course) but it's different in some ways too, during the cemetery attack Barbara gets a tree limb to use as a club, the zombie starts biting Johnny's face off, there're several chapters told from the sheriff's point of view, and it includes pictures from the movie. And also, some people will probably know this, this was not in the movie, but Ben has two boys, and the farmhouse they are in, belongs to the old lady which they find upstairs mutilated, but also her 11 year old grandson, whose bed is covered in blood but he is nowhere to be found...so you've gotta wonder what happened before Tom and the others ever got there.

I didn't even know there was a novelization. Was the movie based on the book? If so, I can see why it's so hard to find.

Actually no, Russo wrote the book based on the movie, and very well in my opinion. I don't know if there are different copies or if they're all from the same time period, the one I have was written in 1974, and in the foreward by George Romero he said in the short time between when the movie came out and then, it had already been translated into 17 different languages to show around the world. Not bad considering how cheaply the film was made and how limited they were in what they could do.