Whitley Strieber has long been renowned as one of America's most spellbinding storytellers, a writer whose novels have consistently broken new ground in the exploration of the dark unknown. With The Forbidden Zone, he continues his journey beyond the cutting edge of terrifying suspense into the sphere of a relentless psychological thriller only he could have written.Every small town has a special place like the mound. Lovers go there to woo, families picnic in summer, children sled in winter. For the community of Oscola, New York, the mound has never been dangerous...until now.Now something beyond cunning or imagining, something that appears undeniably evil is hiding beneath the mound. The terror comes from out of time, space, and the depths of the human mind with its alien needs and desires. It spreads its roots in secret...changing, transforming, reshaping reality. It seeks to sweep aside all that the good townfolk love and cherish: their past, their hopes, the promise of their souls. It fills the innocent earth with its presence - it screams with power.How can ordinary people protect themselves from this evil? How can they fight its weapon of soulbreaking potency - a sweetly seductive yet unspeakably savage pleasure too intense to resist? Brian Kelly, a courageous physicist still grieving over the hideous death of his first wife and child, suspects that the shell of reality must have been torn to let in this monstrosity. He must discover a way to repair the rift. His very pregnant second wife, Loi, a beautiful and brilliant refugee from the pain of Vietnam, has battled demons before. She's ready to dare anything to save her unborn son.The tough yet dangerously vulnerable Ellen Maas, a big-city reporter trying to revive the local paper, must finally commit to destroying the beast - or perish herself. Bob West, a cop who saw every kind of madness and violence during the war, will return to the law of the jungle - or worse - if it will save his family.They must band together to unmask and defeat the invincible evil beneath the mound. But even in their most private imaginings they cannot conceive of the power they will confront and the vengeance it can wreak on any who oppose its design of conquest. Only an impossible gamble will give the town of Oscola a chance to prevail, and only Brian and Loi know the stakes. Read Less