is her husband's. The baby is born and they name him Michael. Michael is an affectionate child, but they notice strange things about him. Animals have a bizarre reaction to him, and he is intensely claustrophobic. As he begins to grow, his parents discover that when night falls a strange transformation overcomes him, as if his entire personality has changed. He slips into trances and prowls the forest, killing the animals that he comes across. Eli boards up his windows to prevent him from escaping at night, and soon thereafter Michael's "spells" seem to relent...until he hits puberty, at least. As a teenager Michael falls in love with a girl he knows from school, but he is also afraid of hurting her because of his transformations. However, he lets his guard down and even decides that he wants to marry her. Before they can leave together, though, he kills a bully at school who tried to attack him. Wanting to get out of town as soon as possible, he and his girlfriend drive to her house to pick up some of her things. As it turns out, her house used to be the home of Henry Scruggs, and from the moment he steps in the door the beast within him (which consists of the emotions, senses, and savage hungers of the creature that was his biological father) springs to the surface and he is left violently insane. Instead of confining him in a mental institution, his parents decide to keep him in the house's cellar, hoping for the day that he might recover. Reception The Dayton Daily News said that the book "is not for everyone. Attacks are described in graphic detail... Still, the characters are convincingly developed, and for those who like a good fright, The Beast Within keeps on delivering." The Raleigh News and Observer also called the book "a gripping thriller of lycanthropy in the Ozarks." However, the Johnson City Press said that in the ending, "Levy seems to have mixed his manifestations at the last minute, from the near plausible to the impossible, leaving the reader feeling slightly misled." Film adaptation The Beast Within is a 1982 Hollywood horror film loosely based on the novel. Hollywood producer Harvey Bernhard heard the title of the Levy novel from an Arbor House book catalog and he purchased the rights before the book was finished. Since the book was