Author of the bestselling novel Thinner and four thrillers that have sold millions in an omnibus edition entitled The Bachman Books, the late Richard Bachman has been described as "Stephen King without a conscience." Now he performs an eerie encore with the posthumous release of The Regulators, a harrowing story of a suburban neighborhood in the grip of surreal terror. It's a summer afternoon in Wentworth, Ohio, and on Poplar Street everything's normal. The paper boy is making his rounds; the Carver kids are bickering at the corner convenience store; a Frisbee is flying on the Reeds' lawn; Gary Soderson is firing up the backyard barbecue. The only thing that doesn't quite fit is the red van idling just up the hill. Soon it will begin to roll, and the killing will begin. A quiet slice of American suburbia is about to turn to toast. The mayhem rages around a seemingly still point, a darkened house lit fitfully from within by a flickering television screen. Inside, where things haven't been normal for a long time, are Audrey Wyler and the autistic nephew she cares for, eight-year-old Seth Garin. They're fighting their own battle, and its intensity has turned 247 Poplar Street into a prisonhouse. By the time night falls on Poplar Street, the surviving residents will find themselves in another world, one where anything, no matter how terrible, is possible…and where the regulators are on their way. By what power they have come, how far they will go, and how they can be stopped-these are the desperate questions. The answers are absolutely terrifying.

About The Regulators, Stephen says: "I had been toying with this idea called The Regulators because I had a sticker on my printer that said that. Then one day I pulled up in my driveway after going to the market and the Voice said, 'Do The Regulators and do it as a Bachman book and use the characters from Desperation but let them be who they're going to be in this story.' These books were an opportunity to test the idea of using characters as a repertory company. There are some passages that are word for word the same in both books and there are also little jokes." He explains further: "It's just like actors who do Hamlet one night and Bus Stop the next."

The peaceful suburban life on Poplar Street in Wentworth, Ohio is shattered one fine day when four vans containing shotgun-wielding "regulators" terrorize the street's residents, cold-bloodedly killing anyone foolish enough to venture outdoors. Houses mysteriously transform into log cabins and the street now ends in what looks like a child's hand-drawn western landscape. Masterminding this sudden onslaught is the evil creature Tak, who has taken over the body of an autistic boy whose parents were killed in a drive-by shooting several months earlier.