Ebola outbreak sparks new interest in 'The Hot Zone'

ENTERTAINMENT

Ebola outbreak sparks new interest in 'The Hot Zone'

The Associated Press Published Saturday, August 23, 2014 12:54PM EDT

Ebola outbreak sparks sales for The Hot Zone

This handout photo provided by Dr. Jerry Jaax, taken in Dec. 1989, shows the Veterinary Medicine Division team from US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in the hot zone, Nonhuman primate quarantine facility in Reston, Va. With the recetn Ebola outbreak, sales have risen for a book about the hot zone. (AP/Gerald Jaax)

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NEW YORK -- The current Ebola outbreak has revived interest in a 1994 book about the deadly virus: Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone."

Preston's million-selling book is No. 7 on The New York Times' nonfiction list of combined print and e-books sellers that comes out Sunday.

"The Hot Zone" is subtitled "a terrifying true story." Its admirers have included Stephen King, who called the first chapter "one of the most horrifying things" that he had ever read.

Preston's book features an account of how Ebola nearly spread to the Washington, D.C., area in the late 1980s. Anchor Books, a paperback imprint of Penguin Random House, has had 70,000 new copies printed over the past month.

Hundreds have died from the latest outbreak, which has been reported in Nigeria, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.