At thirty-four, Internet entrepreneur Ryan Perry seemed to have the world in his pocket - until the first troubling symptoms appeared out of nowhere. Within days, he's diagnosed with incurable cardiomyopathy and finds himself on the waiting list for a heart transplant; it's his only hope, and it's dwindling fast. Ryan is about to lose it all...his health, his girlfriend Samantha, and his life. One year later, Ryan has never felt better. Business is good and he hopes to renew his relationship with Samantha. Then the unmarked gifts begin to appear - a box of Valentine candy hearts, a heart pendant. Most disturbing of all, a graphic heart surgery video and the chilling message: Your heart belongs to me. In a heartbeat, the medical miracle that gave Ryan a second chance at life is about to become a curse worse than death. For Ryan is being stalked by a mysterious woman who feels entitled to everything he has. She's the spitting image of the twenty-six-year-old donor of the heart beating steadily in Ryan's own chest. And she's come to take it back.
DEEPEST NIGHT, MONTANA. 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. BROAD DAYLIGHT, LOS ANGELES. An ordinary morning erupts in cataclysmic violence. A young family is shattered in a heartbeat. Fate will lead this family to an isolated Montana ranch, but their sanctuary will become their worst nightmare. For there they will face a chillingly ruthless enemy, from which no one - living or dead - is safe.
“The world is a machine that produces endless surprises and mysteries layered on mysteries.”'Wilderness,' a darkly intriguing short story first published as an e-book original, was written as prelude to Dean Koontz’s novel of mystery, suspense, and strange wonder—Innocence.Addison Goodheart was born in an isolated home surrounded by a deep forest, never known to his father, kept secret from everyone but his mother, who barely accepts him. Only in the woods, among the wildlife, is Addison truly welcome. Only there can he be at peace. Until the day he first knows terror, the day when his life changes radically and forever....Twelve of the other fourteen short stories and novelettes included in this audio anthology were most recently reissued in a print collection entitled Strange Highways, published by Warner Books (1995). The other two—'The Scariest Thing I Know' (2000) first published in Martha Stewart Living magazine and 'Hostage Situation' (2009) in The New York Times Summer Thriller series.Only the short work 'Down in the Darkness,' has ever been produced for audio.
HE IS BACK Hilary Thomas knew terror as a child, but never anything like this. HE IS BACK He is hunting her with a sick desire more terrifying than hatred could ever be. And he is in her house again. HE IS BACK He is on the stairs, and he can't be stopped. Hilary killed him once and he keeps coming back. Again and again. HE IS BACK He is at her bedroom door.
In the late summer of a long-ago year, a killer arrived in a small city. His name was Alton Turner Blackwood, and in the space of a few months he 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. Homicide detective John Calvino is certain that his own family - his wife and three children - will be targets in the fourth crime, just as his parents and sisters were victims on that distant night when he was fourteen and killed their slayer. As a detective, John is a man of reason who deals in cold facts. But an extraordinary experience convinces him that sometimes death is not a one-way journey, that sometimes the dead return. Here is a ghost story like no other you have read. In the Calvinos, Dean Koontz brings to life a family that might be your own, in a war for their survival against an adversary more malevolent than any he has yet created, with their own home the battleground. Of all his acclaimed novels, none exceeds What the Night Knows in power, in chilling suspense, and in sheer mesmerizing storytelling. "Dean Koontz . . . has the power to scare the daylights out of us." -People "Koontz seems to know us, our deepest foibles and fears." -USA Today "Koontz writes first-rate suspense, scary and stylish." -Los Angeles Times "A master at spinning dark tales . . . Koontz knows how to dial up the terror." -Associated Press
From a top secret government laboratory come two genetically altered life forms. One is a magnificent dog of astonishing intelligence. The other, a hybrid monster of a brutally violent nature. And both are on the loose....
Bestselling author Dean Koontz presents his most terrifying, dramatic and moving novel: The explosive story of a man and a woman, caught in a relentless storm of mankind's darkest creation....
Dean Koontz's unique talent for writing terrifying thrillers with a heart and soul is nowhere more evident than in this latest suspense masterpiece that pits one man against the ultimate deadline. If there were speed limits for the sheer pulse-racing excitement allowed in one novel, Velocity would break them all. Get ready for the ride of your life.…VELOCITY
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.
It seems like a sick joke, and Bill's friend on the police force, Lanny Olson, thinks so too. His advice to Bill is to go home and forget about it. Besides, what could they do even if they took the note seriously? No crime has actually been committed. But less than twenty-four hours later, a young blond schoolteacher is found murdered, and it's Bill's fault: he didn't convince the police to get involved. Now he's got another note, another deadline, another ultimatum…and two new lives hanging in the balance.
Suddenly Bill's average, seemingly innocuous life takes on the dimensions and speed of an accelerating nightmare. Because the notes are coming faster, the deadlines growing tighter, and the killer becoming bolder and crueler with every communication–until Bill is isolated with the terrifying knowledge that he alone has the power of life and death over a psychopath's innocent victims. Until the struggle between good and evil is intensely personal. Until the most chilling words of all are: The choice is yours.
Billy Wile jobbar som bartender och lever ett ganska stillsamt, vanligt liv. Ända till den kväll då han hittar ett meddelande instucket under bilens vindrutetorkare:
'Om du inte tar den här lappen till polisen och underrättar dem kommer jag att döda en förtjusande, blond lärarinna någonstans i Napa County. Om du tar den här lappen till polisen kommer jag i stället att döda en gammal kvinna som är engagerad i välgörenhetsarbete. Du har sex timmar på dig att bestämma dig. Valet är ditt.'
Billy uppfattar det hela som ett dumt skämt men berättar ändå vad som hänt för sin gode vän Lanny Olson som är polis. Lanny är av samma åsikt och råder Billy att nonchalera det hela. Mindre än 24 timmar senare hittas en ung, blond lärarinna brutalt mördad i grannstaden. Billy får skuldkänslor och är beredd att vända sig till polisen. Då kommer nästa meddelande. Och nästa deadline ...
Plötsligt har Billys lugna tillvaro vänts upp och ned. Han dras in i en fullkomlig mardröm som bara blir värre och värre för varje nytt ultimatum han får. Och den fruktansvärda sanningen blir alltmer påtaglig - någon därute har gett honom makten att styra över liv och död!
They're out there. Waiting. Watching. Unseen by normal eyes, but all too visible to Slim MacKenzie, a young man blessed - or cursed - by Twilight Eyes... They're out there Lurking in the darkest shadows of an eerie, moonlit carnival. Feeding their twisted needs with human suffering. And fiendishly plotting the downfall of the human race... They're out there But don't scream. They'll hear you.
Tommy Phan is a successful detective novelist living the American dream in Southern California. One evening he comes home to find a small rag doll on his doorstep. It’s a simple doll, covered entirely in white cloth, with crossed black stitches for the eyes and mouth, and another pair forming an X over the heart. Curious, he brings it inside.
That night Tommy hears an odd popping sound and looks up to see the stitches breaking over the doll’s heart. And in minutes the fabric of Tommy Phan’s reality will be torn apart. Something terrifying emerges from the pristine white cloth, something that will follow Tommy wherever he goes. Something that he can’t destroy. It wants Tommy’s life, and he doesn’t know why. He has only one ally, a beautiful, strangely intuitive waitress he meets by chance—or by a design far beyond his comprehension. He has too many questions, no answers, and very little time. Because the vicious and demonically clever doll has left this warning on Tommy’s computer screen: The deadline is dawn.
Jane Hawk-fiction's most relentless, resourceful, stunning new heroine-continues her battle against a murderous conspiracy in the riveting sequel to The Silent Corner. "No time to delay. Do what you were born to do. Fame will be yours when you do this." These are the words that ring in the mind of mild-mannered, beloved schoolteacher Cora Gundersun-just before she takes her own life, and many others', in a shocking act of carnage. When the disturbing contents of her secret journal are discovered, it seems certain that she must have been insane. But Jane Hawk knows better. In the wake of her husband's inexplicable suicide-and the equally mysterious deaths of scores of other exemplary individuals-Jane picks up the trail of a secret cabal of powerful players who think themselves above the law and beyond punishment. But the ruthless people bent on hijacking America's future for their own monstrous ends never banked on a highly trained FBI agent willing to go rogue-and become the nation's most wanted fugitive-in order to derail their insidious plans to gain absolute power with a terrifying technological breakthrough. Driven by love for her lost husband and by fear for the fi
In the wake of her husband's inexplicable suicide - and the equally mysterious deaths of scores of other exemplary individuals - Jane picks up the trail of a secret cabal of powerful players who think themselves above the law and beyond punishment. But the people bent on hijacking America's future for their own monstrous ends never banked on a highly trained FBI agent willing to become the nation's most wanted fugitive in order to derail their insidious plans.
