On January 24th, 2006, Stephen King (The Shining, Salem's Lot, Christine) released his latest hardcover novel through Scribner - a 384 page novel titled "Cell".  The storyline is detailed below, in an excerpt pulled from South Bend Tribune.  Most notable about this story are the comparisons to the zombies of George Romero's films, as a group of "normies" struggle to survive and overcome the "phoners" - who continue to exsist beyond their last heartbeat.  King has dedicated this book to George Romero (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead), and author Richard Matheson ("I Am Legend", "Noir: Three Novels of Suspense").  If you're considering picking it up, read further to learn more about what Stephen King's latest hardcover is about.

Now, from the author of "Carrie" and "Cujo," comes another c-word: "Cell."

It is one of King's band-of-brothers tales, in which some ordinary folks find themselves caught up in a world turned upside down by a strange and malevolent power and fight back, as best they can, to re-establish some semblance of civilization. Reading how they find food, shelter, weapons, camaraderie and courage is part of the fun.

Here, the evil is transmitted by that annoyingly ubiquitous artifact of modern technology, the cell phone. On an otherwise ordinary October afternoon in Boston, a mysterious signal, soon to be known as the Pulse, is transmitted to the unsuspecting ears of cell users. In an instant, they and others around the globe are transformed into shuffling, implacable flesh-eating zombies -- and you get the distinct impression that King, who eschews cell phones himself -- finds cell users pretty frightening.

With gleeful energy and stomach-turning detail, King describes the destruction of downtown Beantown as the mindless "phone-crazies" drive trucks into hotel lobbies, chew the ears off passing dogs and chomp down on one another and on horrified noncell-users who flee in terror, but not fast enough.

Among the so-called "normals" are Clay, a comic book artist who is frantic to find his son and estranged wife in Maine; Tom, a gay man; Alice, a gutsy teenage soccer star; Mr. Ardai, a steely prep school headmaster; and Jordan, a pre-teen computer geek who performs heroically. Desperately trying to understand the force animating the zombies and to kill as many as they can, they work their way north. Not all survive, but when they go down, they go bravely.

It soon becomes obvious the phone-crazies are "flocking" like birds -- foraging by day and roosting by night -- allowing the "normies" to move by dark to safer ground. It also is evident the zombies are using telepathy and are mutating to a state that is neither crazy nor normal, but something even more terrifying.

Are they a human flock, or are they components of some global computer program? Who unleashed the Pulse: terrorists, or technologists who miscalculated the effect of their software? King never quite tells us, caught up as he is in the gruesome details of the zombie jamboree, but he does find time to take shots at another scourge: elevator music.

The crazies, it turns out, perform a nightly mind-meld to the dulcet strains of the Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Music Makers' version of "Baby Elephant Walk" and "lite-listenin'æ" tunes from Debby Boone, Michael Bolton, Dean Martin and others on an endless boom-box-powered loop. Now there is horror in its purest form.

Click here to purchase it from Amazon.com