From international bestseller Stephen King, a high-concept, ingenious and terrifying story about the mayhem unleashed when a pulse from a mysterious source transforms all cell phone users into homicidal maniacs. There's a reason cell rhymes with hell.
On October 1, God is in His heaven, the stock market stands at 10,140, most of the planes are on time, and Clayton Riddell, an artist from Maine, is almost bouncing up Boylston Street in Boston. He's just landed a comic book deal that might finally enable him to support his family by making art instead of teaching it. He's already picked up a small (but expensive!) gift for his long-suffering wife, and he knows just what he'll get for his boy Johnny. Why not a little treat for himself? Clay's feeling good about the future.
That changes in a hurry. The cause of the devastation is a phenomenon that will come to be known as The Pulse, and the delivery method is a cell phone. Everyone's cell phone. Clay and the few desperate survivors who join him suddenly find themselves in the pitch-black night of civilization's darkest age, surrounded by chaos, carnage, and a human horde that has been reduced to its basest nature...and then begins to evolve.
There's really no escaping this nightmare. But for Clay, an arrow points home to Maine, and as he and his fellow refugees make their harrowing journey north they begin to see crude signs confirming their direction. A promise, perhaps. Or a threat...
There are 193 million cell phones in the United States alone. Who doesn't have one? Stephen King's utterly gripping, gory, and fascinating novel doesn't just ask the question "Can you hear me now?" It answers it with a vengeance.
About the AuthorStephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes
Never Flinch, the short story collection
You Like It Darker (a
New York Times Book Review top ten horror book of 2024),
Holly (a
New York Times Notable Book of 2023),
Fairy Tale,
Billy Summers,
If It Bleeds,
The Institute,
Elevation,
The Outsider,
Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy:
End of Watch,
Finders Keepers, and
Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel
11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by
The New York Times Book Review and won the
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works
The Dark Tower,
It,
Pet Sematary,
Doctor Sleep, and
Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with
It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.