Ebola Outbreak Revives Interest In Robert Preston's 'The Hot Zone'

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.