Under the Dome

by Stephen King

As much as I love King, I really resisted this one as it's 1070 pages!  I ended up basically swept up in this town's freaky predicament - a huge, clear dome is neatly plopped down right over them.  It's nice and high, and slightly permeable, so there's time for the town to basically go crazy, and for the strong (good or bad) to seriously threaten the 'weak'.  It turns out that the cause of the dome is truly fascinating. - think the very end of "Men in Black" with the marbles.  The end justified the means in this book for me, and actually was the conduit for a little more sci-fi reading afterwards!