Showing results by author "Dean Koontz" in All Categories

Amy Redwing has dedicated her life to the Southern California organization she founded to rescue abandoned and endangered golden retrievers. Among dog lovers, she's a legend for the risks she'll take to save an animal from abuse. Among her friends, Amy's heedless devotion is often cause for concern. To widower Brian McCarthy, whose commitment she can't allow herself to return, Amy's behavior is far more puzzling and hides a shattering secret.

Enter the world of the Pendleton: The original owner became a recluse - and was rumored to be more than half mad - after his wife and two children were kidnapped in 1896 and never found. The second owner suffered a worse tragedy in 1935, when his house manager murdered him, his family, and the entire live-in staff.... Craftsmen and laborers working on renovations disappear or go mad.... For years, the Pendleton is a happy place, until a bad turn comes again.... Voices in unknown languages are heard in deserted rooms....

Behind a wall of amnesia, he can’t remember anything. Maybe he can’t bear to. Nameless knows only the mission: Directed by the mysterious Ace of Diamonds, he travels the country, turning predators into prey. But the pain in his past can’t hold him back when dark visions of the future lead him toward his greatest test yet. Nameless is closing in on a revelatory endgame in this collection of short thrillers from #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz.

In the late summer of a long-ago year, Alton Turner Blackwood brutally murdered four families. His savage spree ended only when he himself was killed by the last survivor of the last family, a fourteen-year-old boy. Half a continent away and two decades later, someone is murdering families again, re-creating in detail Blackwood’s crimes.

There once was a killer who knew the night, its secrets and rhythms. How to hide within its shadows. When to hunt. He roamed from town to town, city to city, choosing his prey for their beauty and innocence. His cruelties were infinite, his humanity long since forfeit. But still... he had not yet discovered how to make his special mark among monsters, how to come fully alive as Death. This is the story of how he learned those things, and of what we might do to ensure that he does not visit us.

Susan Thornton watched in terror as her lover died a brutal death in a college hazing. And in the four years that followed, the four young men who participated in that grim fraternity ritual also died violently—or so she thought. Twelve years later, Susan wakes in a hospital bed. Apparently involved in a fatal accident, she can’t remember who she is or why she is there. All she knows is that her life is unfolding into a menacing nightmare—and that the faces that surround her, are those of the four men involved in that murder years ago.

In a forgotten Cold War bunker, a cold-blooded arms dealer counts his cash and watches from a distance as cities collapse into violence. Pledged to stop him is a man without a past, guided by a teenage boy through the tunnels under the corrupted port city. With each stealthy move toward their target, the path ahead grows ever darker.

Ben Chase is a war hero, but a reluctant one. He struggles with bitter memories and feels alienated from the culture to which he has returned. When he claims that a psychopath is stalking him, he has by then made such an outsider of himself that no one believes him. He must resurrect the repressed warrior within to save himself and a woman he comes to love. Heroes need monsters to slay, and they can always find them - within if not without.

A self-styled artist is getting away with murder in Death Valley. If all goes well, so will Nameless. In part two of the Nameless series, the relentless avenger is haunted by nightmares of the past and visions of what’s to come. Palmer Oxenwald’s hunting ground is the Mojave wasteland. His victims are random tourists and hikers. His trophies are cherished photographs of the damage he’s done. His greatest threat is Nameless. Two men with one thing in common: memories of the dead.

Timothy Carrier, having a beer after work at his friend's tavern, enjoys drawing eccentric customers into amusing conversations. But the jittery man who sits next to him tonight has mistaken Tim for someone very different and passes to him a manila envelope full of cash. "Ten thousand now. You get the rest when she's gone."

Exit Wounds is a thrilling anthology of crime stories written by masters of the genre, including Dean Koontz, Val McDermid, Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, Elly Griffiths, Dennis Lehane, Joe R. Lansdale, and others.

Conducting a strange and urgent experiment on the Arctic icefield, a team of scientists has planted sixty powerful explosive charges that will detonate at midnight. Before they can withdraw to the safety of their base camp, a shattering tidal wave breaks loose the ice on which they are working. Now they are hopelessly marooned on an iceberg during a violent winter storm. The bombs beneath them are buried irretrievably deep...and ticking. And they discover that one of them is an assassin with a mission of his own.

Don’t look down.... Because you’re trapped on the 40th floor of a deserted office building by a psychopath called "The Butcher". Don’t look down.… Because you’re an ex-mountain climber and a fall from Everest left you with a bad leg and a paralyzing fear of heights. Don’t look down.… Because The Butcher hasslaughtered the guards an.d short-circuited the elevators - the stairways are blocked, and for you and the beautiful woman with you, there’s only one escape route. Don’t look down.… Because 600 feet of empty space are looking back at you.

Bill Wile is an easygoing, hardworking guy who leads a quiet, ordinary life. But that is about to change. One evening, after his usual eight-hour bartending shift, he finds a typewritten note under the windshield wiper of his car. If you don’t take this note to the police and get them involved, I will kill a lovely blond schoolteacher. If you do take this note to the police, I will instead kill an elderly woman active in charity work. You have four hours to decide. The choice is yours.

Joey Shannon, an alcoholic whose life has been going nowhere for 20 years, returns to his hometown for the funeral of his father. As he leaves town, he gets a mysterious second chance to relive the night in 1975 when his life began its downward spiral: to both literally and figuratively take the road that he didn't originally take. On this road he is supremely tested by conflict with his successful and charismatic older brother P.J., by conflict between his cynicism and his lost faith, and by conflict between the ultimate good and evil.

Harry Lyon was a rational man, a cop who refused to let his job harden his soul. Then one fateful day, he was forced to shoot a man--and a homeless stranger with bloodshot eyes uttered the haunting words that challenged Harry Lyon's sanity: "Ticktock, ticktock. You'll be dead in sixteen hours...Dead by dawn...Dead by dawn...Dead by dawn..."

An eerie light proclaims the arrival of a mysterious watcher in the woods. And one solitary man begins a desperate battle against something unknown - and unknowable.

In the year since her son Danny’s tragic death, Tina Evans has suffered incredible heartache. But now, with her Vegas show about to premiere, Tina might be ready to put her grief behind her and start over. Until a shocking message appears on the chalkboard in Danny's room: NOT DEAD. Those two words send her on a terrifying journey from the bright lights of Las Vegas to the cold shadows of the High Sierras, where she uncovers a terrible secret.

Once there was a girl who ran away and joined a traveling carnival. She married a man she grew to hate - and gave birth to a child she could never love. A child so monstrous that she killed it with her own hands.… Twenty-five years later, Ellen Harper has a new life, a new husband, and two normal children - Joey loves monster movies, and Amy is about to graduate from high school. But their mother drowns her secret guilt in alcohol and prayer.

Twelve-year-old Crispin has lived on the streets since he was nine - with only his wits and his daring to sustain him, and only his silent dog, Harley, to call his friend. He is always on the move, never lingering in any one place long enough to risk being discovered. Still, there are certain places he returns to. In the midst of the tumultuous city, they are havens of solitude: like the hushed environs of St. Mary Salome Cemetery, a place where Crispin can feel at peace - safe, at least for a while, from the fearsome memories that plague him... and seep into his darkest nightmares.