It's a bright Autumn morning in the small town of Chester's Mill. Claudette Sanders is having a flying lesson and Dale Barbara is hitching a ride out of town. Neither make it to their intended destinations... Inexplicably, an invisible barrier has descended over the town. A bird is chopped right in half; a gardener's hands are severed at the wrists; the plane explodes with sheets of flame spreading to the ground and Dale Barbara, Iraq war vet turned short-order cook, is forced to turn back into the town he so desperately needed to leave. As the residents speculate about what has cut them off from the rest of the world, the Army searches for an inside man. 'Barbie' is put in charge. But Big Jim Rennie, the man who holds the town in his powerful grip, has other plans. And the dome could just be the answer to his political prayers. As food, electricity and water run short and children start to have premonitions of a terrifying Halloween, 'Barbie' is forced to take on Big Jim and his renegade supporters. Now time is running out for those living under the dome. Can they find what has created it before it's too late? Stephen King's mesmerising new masterpiece - his biggest, most riveting novel since THE STAND - features spectacularly sinister characters and a terrifying phenomenon. UNDER THE DOME is a high-octane thriller, an apocalyptic vision and a fascinating allegory on a tyrannical state of political darkness.