The Dead Zone is the latest in a long line of successes from Stephen King - 'Salem's Lot, Carrie and The Shining, and more recently The Stand and Nightshift, both of which were in the U.S. bestseller lists for weeks. The Dead Zone is a chilling and magnificent exploration of a man cursed with an ability which is incomprehensible to most of those around him - and primarily to himself.

By the time he graduated from college, John Smith had forgotten all about the bad fall he took on the ice that January day in 1953. He had forgotten that, from time to time in the years afterwards, his 'hunches' (as he called them) had proved to be correct - he would know what the next record on the radio would be before the DJ announced it, for instance - and he never connected them with that first accident. It was not until the night of the county fair, and his extraordinary run of luck on the wheel of fortune, that anything very startling happened.

Before the second accident. Later, he thought of that often.

But after the second accident, which cost him four years of his life, he became aware of a faculty, once only dimly hinted at, now terrifyingly powerful. John Smith has the gift of precognition...Or is it a gift?

John Smith's special insight proves to be helpful to many, is taken advantage of by others, is mocked and reviled by even more - but no one except John Smith himself can appreciate how isolating it is. And it is alone - completely alone - that he has to make his ultimate decision...