The Forbidden Zone

The mound, a quiet town gathering spot ... until now. Now something undeniably evil is hiding beneath it. A powerful darkness, terror with unfathomable needs and desires, spreading its roots in secret, transforming all that the good townfolk love and cherish: their past, their hopes, their souls.Courageous physicist Brian Kelley and his beautiful, very pregnant wife, must confront the horror. They will band together with their neighbors to battle a power transcending their worst imaginings. And only an impossible gamble will give them a chance to survive The Forbidden Zone — master storyteller Whitley Strieber's breakneck journey beyond the cutting edge of terrifying suspense.

From Publishers Weekly

The favorite picnic spot of a small New York town is possessed by an inscrutable evil spirit; a Literary Guild selection. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A small town in the Adirondacks becomes a beachhead for an invasion of large, insect-like creatures that first seduce and then sadistically absorb the native population. Brian and Loi Kelly become aware of the unearthly invasion and take the lead in fighting the creatures and warning their neighbors. Brian feels responsible for the death and destruction because his physics research laid the groundwork for the onslaught. This audiobook is a work of graphic and sensationalized (however imaginative) violence bereft of any logical or believable context. Reader Buck Schirner's tendency to overdramatize, especially during the most violent passages, exacerbates the ludicrous text. This is not Strieber's best work. Not recommended.- Kristen L. Smith, Loras Coll. Lib., Dubuque, Ia.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Strieber's horror novels often rework classic occult themes (Unholy Fire: possession; The Hunger: vampirism, etc). Now, in an unusually spooky--and splattery--offering, the author updates the monstrous mythos of H.P. Lovecraft, to whom he dedicates the book. The eerie doings pile on quickly, beginning with physicist Brian Kelly hearing screams emanating from a mound in his hometown of Oscola, New York. Years back, Brian's first wife and child died in a fire, and ever since he's been a wreck, abandoning his time- travel experiments and cringing at the screams he still can hear- -and so Brian wonders whether he's imagining this scream, until his new and pregnant Vietnamese wife, Loi, also hears it. A dig, however, reveals only dirt. But later that night, newspaperwoman Ellen Maas visits the dig and is swarmed by a horde of huge lightning bugs that nearly suffocates her, while Brian, also returning to the mound, is mesmerized by purple lights that crackle with sexual energy. The next day, screaming is heard at another site, and this time digging reveals the corpse of a woman, every bone in her body pulverized--but her left eye still glimmering with evil intent. Ellen and Brian team up to investigate, evoking Loi's jealousy--but when the menace fully reveals itself in the form of further animate corpses bursting open to loose further swarms of lightning bugs, the corpses then mutating into gigantic tentacled creatures that ferociously shred the town and its inhabitants--it's Loi who leads the fight. But can she combat this superintelligent creature, freed from a parallel universe by Brian's old experiments, before it destroys her--as well as her baby, squirming to be born? Genuinely scary, with plenty of scattered body parts for gorehounds--but subtle it is not, and the Providence recluse was scarier still, by saying less and implying far more. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From the Inside Flap

The Bookcassette® format is a special recording technique developed as a means of condensing the full, unabridged audio text of a book to record it on fewer tapes. In order to listen to these tapes, you will need a cassette player with balance control to adjust left/right speaker output. Special adaptors to allow these tapes to be played on any cassette player are available through the publisher or some US retail electronics stores.

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