Under the Dome » (Unabridged)

Few authors have tapped into our secret fears as adeptly as Stephen King, Master of the Macabre and one of the most widely read novelists writing today. With his trademark blend of fantasy, horror, and psychological suspense, this prolific and immensely popular contemporary writer continues to remind us that evil is still a potent force in the world.

STEPHEN KING "RETURNS TO HIS GLORY DAYS OF THE STAND" (New York Daily News) WITH HIS NEW #1 BESTSELLING EPIC

Just down Route 119 in Chester's Mill, Maine, all hell is about to break loose. . . .

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day, a small town is suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and rain down flaming wreckage. A gardener's hand is severed as the dome descends. Cars explode on impact. Families are separated and panic mounts. No one can fathom what the barrier is, where it came from, and when--or if--it will go away. Now a few intrepid citizens, led by an Iraq vet turned short-order cook, face down a ruthless politician dead set on seizing the reins of power under the dome. But their main adversary is the dome itself. Because time isn't just running short. It's running out.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Stephen King's Under the Dome is another brick -- more like a wheelbarrow full -- in the construction of the argument that genre writers are doing far more than their high-lit colleagues to realize the novel's potential for examining the institutions and politics of contemporary society. In King's 1,074-page Under the Dome, a transparent dome suddenly descends on a Maine town, trapping the people inside and allowing the local thugs, elected and otherwise, to rule according to nothing more than their lust for power. The military and the media are stationed around the dome's perimeter. And Washington even has someone -- inadvertently -- on the inside: Barbie, the former military man turned drifter, reappointed in the face of the emergency and designated by President Obama as his man in charge.