The sleepy English locality of Middletown is about to get even sleepier, as a strange malady starts to affect the population. It spreads quickly, causing the authorities to quarantine this small city and seek out the only person who might be able to help: Doctor Andrew Strauss. However, Strauss has a secret - one that has linked him to this place all his life; one that has linked him to a particular person there, though he doesn’t yet know who.

But he’s not the only one hiding things, and as he ventures into Middletown to collect samples with an army escort - a mixture of UK and US troops - cracks soon begin to appear in the operation, especially when his team come up against the most terrifying threat humankind has ever known...

From the imagination of the award-winning and best-selling author of Who’s Been...? and Red (optioned for film and turned into an award-winning feature script), this chilling reworking of another well-loved fairy tale is like a heady mix of The Andromeda Strain, Inception, Outbreak, and Quatermass, and is a tale that’s bound to delight genre fans the world over.