1973, Bantam
Susan Harris lived in a self-imposed seclusion, in a mansion featuring
numerous
automated systems controlled by a state-of-the-art computer.
Every comfort was
provided, and in this often unsafe world of ours, her security was
absolute. But now her
security system has been breached, her sanctuary from the outside
world violated by an
insidious artificial intelligence which has taken control of her
house. In the privacy of her
own home, and against her will, Susan will experience an inconceivable
act of terror.
She will become the object of the ultimate computer's consuming
obsession: to learn
everything there is to know about the flesh...
1997, A. Knopf
A catastrophic plane crash. three hundred and thirty dead,
no survivors. Among the
victims are the wife and two children of crime reporter Joe
Carpenter. One year later Joe
learns of a secret survivor of the crash: a woman scientist
carrying something stolen from
a government laboratory. He sets out to find the woman and
the truth, and becomes the
target of shadowy and powerful adversaries. Sole Survivor
unfolds at a heartstopping
pace as a desperate chase and a shattering emotional odyssey
lead Joe to a truth that will
force him to reassess everything he thought he knew about
life and death. Haunting,
furiously paced, and certain to be Dean Koontz's biggest best-seller
yet.
1996, A. Knopf
Tommy Phan is a thirty-year-old Vietnamese-American detective novelist
living in
Southern California, and a chaser of the American dream. He drives
home his brand-new
Corvette one day to discover a strange doll on his doorstep. It's
rather like a rag doll, but
is covered entirely with white cloth, having no face or hair or
clothes, little more than a
doll blank. Where the eyes should be, there are two crossed stitches
of black thread.
Five sets of crossed black stitches mark the mouth, and another
pair form an X over the
heart. He brings it into the house. That night, he hears an odd
popping sound and looks
up to see the crossed stitches breaking over the doll's heart. When
he picks the doll up,
he feels something pulsing in its chest. Another thread unravels
to reveal a reptilian green
eye-not a doll's eye, because it blinks. Tommy Phan pursues the
thing as it scrambles
away into his house-and then is pursued by it as it evolves from
a terrifying and vicious
minikin into a hulking and formidable opponent bent on killing him.
THE DEADLINE IS
DAWN, the creature types on Tommy's computer screen, and in the
hours that follow
with the help of a beautiful, strangely intuitive waitress he meets
on the highway, Tommy
frantically flees this fierce enemy, desperate to discover what
this thing is and why it's
pursuing him.
1996, A. Knopf
His name is Edgler Foreman Vess. He likes to make words from the
letters of his
name- GOD, DEMON, SAVE, RAGE, ANGER, FEAR, FOREVER, are just a few
of them-and then
make sentences of the words. One of his favorites, GOD FEARS ME,
is sometimes the last
thing he whispers to his victims. Edgler Vess is a self-proclaimed
"homicidal adventurer":
On this night, his adventure - murdering everyone in the house -
becomes Chyna's long
nightmare. Trapped in Vess's deadly orbit, Chyna thinks only of
getting out alive. But
when she inadvertently learns the identity of Vess's intended next
victim, waiting for him
far from the Napa Valley, Chyna is gripped by concern for this other
person, who is as
innocent as Chyna, and as endangered. Driven now by a sense of responsibility
for
another, by a purpose and meaning beyond mere self-preservation,
Chyna rises to
unexpected heights of courage and daring-her only hope as the threat
of Edgler Foreman
Vess closes in and grows more horrifying moment by moment. Intensity
unfolds over the
course of just twenty-four hours, but within that brief time frame,
Dean Koontz gives us
what is perhaps his most inventive, emotionally intricate, and terrifying
suspenseful novel
yet.