Winner of the inaugural James Herbert Award, THE TROOP is a novel that will not fail to get under your skin...


He felt something touch his hand. Which is when he looked down.


For the scouts of Troop 52, three days of camping, hiking and survival lessons on Falstaff Island is as close as they'll get to a proper holiday.


Which was when he saw it.


But when an emaciated figure stumbles into their camp asking for food, the trip takes a horrifying turn. The man is not just hungry, he's sick. Sick in a way they have never seen before.


Which was when he screamed.


Cut off from the mainland, the troop face a terror far worse than anything they could have made up around a campfire. To survive they will have to fight their fears, the elements ... and eventually each other.

'THE TROOP scared the hell out of me, and I couldn't put it down. Not for the faint-hearted' Stephen King

From the national bestselling author of The Troop—about which Stephen King raved that it “scared the hell out of me, and I couldn’t put it down”—comes this utterly terrifying new novel that pits the mysteries of The Abyss against the horrors of The Shining.

A strange plague called the ’Gets is decimating humanity on a global scale. It causes people to forget—small things at first, like where they left their keys, then the not-so-small things, like how to drive or the letters of the alphabet. Their bodies forget how to function involuntarily. There is no cure.

But now, far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, deep in the Mariana Trench, a heretofore-unknown substance hailed as “ambrosia”—a universal healer, from initial reports—has been discovered. It may just be the key to eradicating the ’Gets.

In order to study this phenomenon, a special research lab, the Trieste, has been built eight miles under the sea’s surface. But when the station goes incommunicado, a brave few descend through the lightless fathoms in hopes of unraveling the mysteries lurking at those crushing depths . . . and perhaps to encounter an evil blacker than anything one could possibly imagine.

Once a year, scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a three-day camping trip; a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story and a roaring bonfire. But when an unexpected intruder -- shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry -- stumbles upon their campsite, Tim and the boys are exposed to something far more frightening than any tale of terror. The human carrier of a bioengineered nightmare. An inexplicable horror that spreads faster than fear. A harrowing struggle for survival that will pit the troop against the elements, the infected ... and one another.