Tales of Terror

Dean Koontz's unique talent for writing thrillers and tales of terror with a heart and soul is evident in so many of his books. The following is a list of favorite terrifying stories that will keep your pulse racing and the pages turning with excitement. Get ready for the ride of your life.

FRANKENSTEIN I: The Prodigal Son From the celebrated imagination of Dean Koontz comes a powerful reworking of one of the classic stories of all time. If you think you know the story, you know only half the truth. Get ready for the mystery, the myth, the terror, and the magic of... Frankenstein. Every city has secrets. But none as terrible as this. His name is Deucalion, a tattooed man of mysterious origin, a sleight-of-reality artist who's traveled the centuries with a secret worse than death. He arrives in New Orleans as a serial killer stalks the streets, a killer who carefully selects his victims for the humanity that is missing in himself. But this killer isn't merely a homicidal maniac—he's Deucalion's deranged maker. Click here to read more.

FRANKENSTEIN II: City of Night They are stronger, heal better, and think faster than any humans ever created—and they must be destroyed. But not even Victor Helios—once Frankenstein—can stop the engineered killers he's set loose on a reign of terror through modern-day New Orleans. Now the only hope rests in a one-time "monster" and his all-too-human partners, Detectives Carson O'Connor and Michael Maddison. Deucalion's centuries-old history began as Victor's first and failed attempt to build the perfect human–and it is fated to end in the ultimate confrontation between a damned creature and his mad creator. Click here to read more.

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. In 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. The killer becomes 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. Click here to read more.

THE TAKING In one of the most dazzling books of his celebrated career, Dean Koontz delivers a masterwork of page-turning suspense and terror that surpasses even his own inimitable reputation as a chronicler of our worst fears–and best dreams. In THE TAKING he tells the story of a community cut off from a world under siege, and the terrifying battle for survival waged by a young couple and their neighbors as familiar streets become fog-shrouded death traps. Gripping, heartbreaking, and triumphant in the face of mankind's darkest hour, here is a small-town slice-of-doomsday thriller that strikes to the core of each of us to ask: What would you do? THE TAKING is an adventure story like no other, a relentless roller-coaster read that brings apocalypse to Main Street and showcases the talents of one of our most original and mesmerizing novelists at the pinnacle of his powers. Click here to read more.

FEAR NOTHING Christopher Snow is the best-known resident of 12,000-strong Moonlight Bay, California. This is because 28-year-old Chris has xeroderma pigmentosum (XP)–a light-sensitivity so severe that he cannot leave his house in daylight, cannot enter a normally-lit room, cannot sit at a computer. Chris's natural element is the night, and his parents, both academics, chose to live in Moonlight Bay because in a small town Chris can make the nightscape his own–roaming freely through the town on his bike, surfing in the moonlight, exploring while most people sleep. But when his parents die, Chris's protected life changes forever. In the 24 hours this book encompasses, Christopher Snow will find out that, sheltered though he's been, he has the soul of a fighter and an adventurer. By the end of the book he will have killed a man, will have discovered the role his own mother played in the birth of a conspiracy, will have come to recognize the extraordinary guardians that, unknown to him, have watched over him for years. He will realize that some people hate him, others revere him, and neither his own life nor those of anyone he knows will ever be the same. Click here to read more.

SEIZE THE NIGHT At no time does Moonlight Bay look more beautiful than at night. Yet it is precisely then that the secluded little town reveals its menace. Now children are disappearing. From their homes. From the streets. And there's nothing their families can do about it. Because in Moonlight Bay, the police work their hardest to conceal crimes and silence victims. No matter what happens in the night, their job is to ensure that nothing disturbs the peace and quiet of Moonlight Bay.... Christopher Snow isn't afraid of the dark. Forced to live in the shadows because of a rare genetic disorder, he knows the night world better than anyone. To uncover the root of the town's terror, Christopher must confront an adversary at one with the most dangerous darkness of all. The darkness inside the human heart. Click here to read more.

ODD THOMAS The dead don't talk. But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Odd Thomas thinks of himself as an ordinary guy, if possessed of a certain measure of talent at the Pico Mundo Grill and rapturously in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, Stormy Llewellyn. Maybe he has a gift, maybe it's a curse, Odd has never been sure, but he tries to do his best by the silent souls who seek him out. A mysterious man comes to town with a voracious appetite, a filing cabinet stuffed with information on the world's worst killers, and a pack of hyena-like shades following him wherever he goes. Who the man is and what he wants, not even Odd's deceased informants can tell him. In less than twenty-four hours, Pico Mundo will awaken to a day of catastrophe. As evil coils under the searing desert sun, Odd travels through the shifting prisms of his world, struggling to avert a looming cataclysm with the aid of his soul mate and an unlikely community of allies that includes the King of Rock 'n' Roll. His account of two shattering days when past and present, fate and destiny converge is the stuff of our worst nightmaresand a testament by which to live: sanely if not safely, with courage, humor, and a full heart that even in the darkness must persevere. See more information on the terrifying tales of ODD THOMAS and the sequels, FOREVER ODD and BROTHER ODD.

MIDNIGHT The citizens of Moonlight Cove, California, are changing. Some are losing touch with their deepest emotions. Others are surrendering to their wildest urges. And the few who remain unchanged are absolutely terrified–if not brutally murdered in the dead of night. Dean Koontz, the bestselling master of suspense, invites you into the shocking world of Moonlight Cove–where four unlikely survivors confront the darkest realms of human nature. Here is the ultimate masterpiece of terror and fear. Click here for more information on Dean Koontz and his books. If you'd like to purchase MIDNIGHT, Click here.

TWILIGHT EYES 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 plotting the downfall of the human race... THEY'RE OUT THERE. You can't run. You can't hide. But you can die. Click here for more information on Dean Koontz's tales of terror and other books. If you'd like to purchase TWILIGHT EYES, click here.

PHANTOMS They found the town silent, apparently abandoned. Then they found the first body strangely swollen and still warm. One hundred fifty were dead, 350 missing. But the terror had only begun in the tiny mountain town of Snowfield, California. At first they thought it was the work of a maniac. Or terrorists. Or toxic contamination. Or a bizarre new disease. But then they found the truth. And they saw it in the flesh. And it was worse than anything any of them had ever imagined. Click here to read more.

DARKFALL Winter gripped the city. Terror gripped it, too. They found four corpses in four days, each more hideous than the last. At first the cops thought they were dealing with a psychopath. But soon they heard eerie sounds in the ventilation system — and saw unearthly silver eyes in the snow-slashed night. In a city paralyzed by a blizzard, something watches, something stalks...Welcome to the terrifying tale of DARKFALL. Click here to read more.

WINTER MOON 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. Click here to read more.

INTENSITY Past midnight, Chyna Shepherd, twenty-six, gazed out a moonlit window, unable to sleep on her first night in the Napa Valley home of her best friend's family. Instinct proves reliable. A murderous sociopath, Edgler Forman Vess, has entered the house, intent on killing everyone inside. A self-proclaimed "homicidal adventurer," Vess lives only to satisfy all appetites as they arise, to immerse himself in sensation, to live without fear and terror, remorse or limits, to live with intensity. Chyna is trapped in his deadly orbit. When she discovers his next victim is an innocent young girl, Chyna finds meaning beyond mere self-preservation. She musters every inner resource she has to save the endangered girl—as moment by moment, the terrifying threat of Edgler Foreman Vess intensifies. Click here to read more.

HIDEAWAY He was clinically dead after the accident—but was miraculously revived. Now Hatch Harrison and his wife, Lindsey, approach each day with a new appreciation of life...shadowed by his glimpse of death. Something has come back from the other side. A terrible presence that links Hatch's mind to a dangerous psychotic. A dark force of murderous rage that hides within us all. Click here for more information on Dean Koontz's tales of terror and other books. If you'd like to purchase HIDEAWAY, click here.

THE BAD PLACE Frank Pollard is afraid to fall asleep. Every morning he awakes, he discovers something strange—like blood on his hands—a bizarre mystery that tortures his soul. Two investigators have been hired to follow the haunted man. But only one person—a young man with Down's Syndrome—can imagine where their journeys might end. That terrible place from which no one ever returns...THE BAD PLACE. Click here for more information on Dean Koontz's tales of terror and other books. If you'd like to purchase THE BAD PLACE, click here.

DRAGON TEARS Harry Lyon was a rational man, a cop who refused to let his job harden his soul. His partner urged him to surrender to the chaos of life. But Harry believed in order and reason. 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." Click here for more information on Dean Koontz's tales of terror and other books. If you'd like to purchase DRAGON TEARS, click here.