Koontz, Dean Books

Santa's Twin

Dean Koontz

Amazon Price: $10.36 List Price: $12.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Paperbacks Amazon Marketplace: 54 new & used starting at $1.09

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A contemporary Christmas classic for children
of all ages -- including those who pretend to have grown up!

Charlotte and Emily are determined to save Santa from his mischievous twin -- Bob Claus -- who has not only stolen Santa's sleigh and stuffed his toy bag full of mud pies, cat poop, and broccoli, but has also threatened to turn Donner, Blitzen, and the others into reindeer soup!

How the brave but foolhardy sisters fly to the North Pole and rescue Santa from his "deeply troubled" twin is an utterly charming and unforgettable story sure to add sparkle to your holiday season.

Read it aloud, preferably to someone you love to hear laugh!

This perennial yuletide favorite was written by bestselling novelist Dean Koontz in 1996 at the request of his fans and has been pleasing readers every holiday season since. Winner of an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition while he was just a senior in college, Koontz today is a world-famous author whose books have been published in thirty-eight different languages and have sold more than three hundred million copies.

Lavishly illustrated with spectacular paintings by Phil Parks, this thoroughly modern masterpiece breathes new life and warmth into the world's most beloved legend.

Dean Koontz's Frankenstein: Prodigal Son

Dean Koontz

Amazon Price: $15.61 List Price: $22.95 Not yet published By: Del Rey/Dabel Brothers

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 112 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the nineteenth century, Dr. Victor Frankenstein brought his notorious creation to life, but a horrible turn of events forced him to abandon it and slip away from the public eye. Two centuries later, a serial killer is on the loose in New Orleans, gruesomely salvaging body parts from each of his victims, as if trying to assemble a perfect human being.

Detective Carson O’Connor is cool, cynical, and every bit as tough as she looks. Her partner, Michael Maddison, would back her up all the way to Hell itself–and that just may be where their new case leads. For as they investigate the strange killings, O’Connor and Madison find themselves drawn into a weird underworld of deception and secrets where a man named Victor Helios has created an entire race of perfectly engineered people who are meant to take humankind’s place one day. But something is happening to some of Helios’s creations, and it may be that this bizarre serial killer is the least of the detectives’ worries.

From the masterly pen of New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz–and featuring an adaptation by legendary comic book writer Chuck Dixon and gorgeous illustrations by acclaimed artist Brett Booth–Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein: Prodigal Son is a story filled with fast-paced action, gripping horror, and thrilling adventure.

Oddkins: A Fable for All Ages

Dean R. Koontz, Phil Parks

List Price: $17.95 By: Warner Books Amazon Marketplace: 29 new & used starting at $32.40

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 41 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Childhood Favorite 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I remember reading this book when I was 10, it's stuck with me ever since. Now with kids of my own I can only appricate the story's plot more. I love this story and am only sadden to know that it is no longer in print for other adults and children to enjoy cheaply.

One of the best story books ever 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I have been looking for a copy of this book for years. It was the 2nd book I read by Koontz and fell in love with it. I had read it over several times and fell into the story and art work everytime. Even though it's been over 10 years since I've last seen or read the story, I remember it as if I read it last week. I only wish it was more available for others to enjoy as well. This is definately a story for those who are still a child at heart.

Fable for kids 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

It is a nice story, with a definite "good" advise for kids. I think it would make a good introductory book for youngsters into the "suspense/horror" genre.

Editorial Review:

When the death of their creator leaves them without protection, a band of magic living toys must attempt a dangerous journey across the city to another toyshop, while under attack from evil toys serving the Dark One.

Robot Santa: The Further Adventures of Santa's Twin

Dean Koontz, Phil Parks

List Price: $19.99 By: HarperCollins Amazon Marketplace: 35 new & used starting at $6.60

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Watch out Emily and Charlotte...Bob's at it again! 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Those of us who read and enjoyed Santa's Twin know that sisters, Emily and Charlotte had to save Christmas last year (the events in this story take place a year later) by rescuing the real Santa Claus after his deranged twin brother, Bob, stuffed poor Santa in a sack, dropped him into the basement, then hijacked the sleigh and reindeer. Oh, the awful things crazy Bob left in unsuspecting kids' Christmas stockings! This time around, Bob is repentent and tries to make amends by building a robot Santa that will take some of the burden off his jolly brother, Nicholas. But, of course, the robot malfunctions on its first stop on Christmas Eve, Emily and Charlotte's house, and winds up TAKING instead of giving. It's one calamity after another as Emily and Charlotte try to prevent Robot Santa from destroying their house without awakening their parents. Their dog, Woofer, loyal pooch that he is, tries to help but is sidetracked by a trained gorilla named Keith who is supposed to be piloting the sleigh but instead goes into the girls' kitchen to whip up a tasty treat. Woofer is undone by his stomach, and follows the gorilla. All seems lost! Will Emily and Charlotte manage to get a message to Santa before Robot Santa turns their house into a disaster area? This was a funny follow-up to Santa's Twin. I wonder what's going to happen to the put-upon sisters next year. Hopefully Bob will get some therapy. After all, it isn't easy being the brother of someone as perfect as Santa Claus. I loved the illustrations as much as I did the hilarious story itself. Especially the drawing of Woofer floating through the air after a fall from the roof. The expression on his face is priceless! LOL!

Editorial Review:

Dean Koontz kicks the holidayseason into high gear with a wildly inventive and wickedly funny sequel to his perennial Christmas bestseller Santa's Twin.

The Claus family's bad seed, Bob, is back and dishing out a second helping of holiday havoc and headaches for his twin brother, Santa. Exactly a year has passed since Bob kidnapped Santa and visited Charlotte and Emily in his stead, bearing gifts of mud pies, cat poop, and broccoli. After his defeat at the hands of the two brave sisters, Bob has worked hard to redeem himself in Santa's eyes. Unfortunately Bob's spare time has been spent secretly building a robot Santa Claus. Super Santa One was designed to help Santa halve his delivery time, but Bob has left a screw loose on his creation (several screws, actually), and this Christmas Eve, a badly malfunctioning robot Santa Claus is coming to town.

Every Day's a Holiday: Amusing Rhymes for Happy Times

Dean Koontz

Amazon Price: $14.39 List Price: $17.99 Usually ships in 11 to 13 days By: HarperCollins Amazon Marketplace: 12 new & used starting at $5.63

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 2.0 of 5

Not very amusing 2 out of 5 stars.
10 of 26 people found this review helpful.

The only amusing thing about this collection is that Dean Koontz fancies himself a children's author. The premise is a clever idea gone horribly wrong. Much of the rhyme is unoriginal or forced and some of it goes on and on and on so that we feel we are stuck in one of the author's horror novels. Stick to what you do best Mr. Koontz and leave quality children's writing to quality children's authors, please!

Editorial Review:

In Every Day's a Holiday, the ever inventive Dean Koontz ponders the origin of Valentine's Day; introduces Jinx, a guy who really gets into Halloween; and explains that extra "a" on the end of Kwanzaa. There are also holidays you may not have heard of -- but that you are sure to be celebrating soon -- including Praise-the-Chicken Day, Lost-Tooth Day, and Up-Is-Down Day.

With over 250 million copies of his books sold, Dean Koontz is considered one of the world's premiere suspense writers. Now he is conquering a whole new field with his flagrantly funny poetry. As he did in two previous books for children, The Paper Doorway and Santa's Twin, the New York Times best-selling author has created original verse that combines fun, fantasy, and just a dollop of the macabre. The resulting laugh-fest is truly cause for celebration.

The Paper Doorway: Funny Verse and Nothing Worse

Dean Koontz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Move over, Shel Silverstein and Edward Lear; company's coming. From sneezing trees to reliable bunnies to food psychos, bestselling author Dean Koontz bowls his readers over with his wacky, wild, wonderful poetry in The Paper Doorway. Following the success of their earlier children's books, Oddkins and Santa's Twin, Koontz and illustrator Phil Parks embarked on an adventurous new path: funny verse (and nothing worse). With poems titled "A Cure for Ugly," "The Pig with Pride," "Stars, Mars, and Chocolate Bars," The Woggle Wrangler," "The Young Musician--Or Maybe Thug," and "You Get the Pickle You Asked For," accompanied by elaborate and witty black-and-white illustrations, the creative pair lets loose with a riotous collection that will tickle the funny bone of readers of all ages (especially those of the middle-school-boy variety). Sometimes gross, sometimes spooky, usually tongue-in-cheek, the verses tackle all subjects with equal gusto. (Ages 8 to 13) --Emilie Coulter

One Door Away from Heaven

Dean Koontz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 256 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Dean Koontz virtually invented the cross-genre novel, and in One Door Away from Heaven he mixes an action thriller with post-X-Files alien paranoia to remarkable effect. Micky Bellsong is a young woman at a crisis point in her life, using a stay at her Aunt Geneva's to sort things out. Then the precocious and deformed Leilani Klonk walks into her life, telling stories of her stepfather and drugged-up mother, who believe aliens will beam the girl into their mothership and heal her deformities before her 10th birthday. But tales of the stepfather's vicious past, including his hand in several murders, leave Micky believing that a far more terrible fate awaits her friend. So when the parents take off with Leilani, Micky pursues.

As is typical with a Koontz novel, nothing turns out to be what it seems, and the meticulously crafted plot tightens like a noose with every turn of the page. His characters are exceptionally drawn, driving the novel forward with realism and warmth. Micky is one of his more attractive young heroines, but the real star is Leilani, a mature young girl whose plucky nature and sparkling dialogue instantly make her Koontz's most memorable creation. She embodies his belief that despite violence, pain, and suffering, there is always goodness to be found in every person and situation. Koontz has once again proven why he is one of the premier novelists of his generation. --Jonathan Weir, Amazon.co.uk

Velocidad/ Velocity (Narrativa (Punto de Lectura)) (Spanish Edition)

Dean R. Koontz

Amazon Price: $11.89 List Price: $13.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Punto de Lectura Amazon Marketplace: 24 new & used starting at $7.95

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Bill Wile is an easygoing, hardworking guy who leads a quiet, ordinary life. One evening, 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, to him and his friend on the police force. But less than twenty-four hours later, a young blond schoolteacher is found murdered.

Description in Spanish: Billy, un camarero de vida tranquila, encuentra en el parabrisas de su coche una nota en la que alguien le advierte que, si avisa a la policía, una joven maestra morirá, y si no lo hace, la víctima será una anciana. Aconsejado por un amigo policía, Billy ignora el anónimo, pero, en menos de 24 horas, una profesora es hallada muerta... Enseguida encuentra una nueva nota y Billy se ve inmerso en una veloz pesadilla con plazos cada vez más cortos y asesinatos cada vez más despiadados...

Funhouse

Dean R. Koontz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 103 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Love it! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The Funhouse by Dean Koontz is a fun read, it's one of his earlier books and boy I enjoyed reading it. It's a good short summer read, this book isn't considered scary but it is funny and quite seductive. Koontz knows how to write, his description of places of people in this book is strong, I highly recommend The Funhouse!

Waste of time and money 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book sounded like it had potential from the blurb. I was sorely disappointed. The characters were underdeveloped and incredibly one dimensional. There was a lot of potential to build on certain plot points, but each route Koontz took the easy way out with his conviniently written characters. The ending...well I won't spoil it for you, but let me assure you there is NOTHING to spoil. That's right. The book ends with absolutely no closure. The protagonist (of the chapter, it jumps to so many different characters) doesn't figure out what the hell happened, the mother doesn't find out about a revenge plot and NOTHING was resolved. I read the afterword hoping there was a secret page somewhere that went "psych! Here's the real ending! Thanks for playing along!" I was really upset I wasted my time on this book.

The only positive thing I can say about this book is that at least it was a quick read. I had problems forcing myself to read it simply for its absurdity, but once you are reading, the pages turn quickly.

So yes. Koontz has written some good books. This is not one of them. I recommend reading something like Life Expectancy or The Servants of Twilight if you want to read something silly and unlikely, but at least well written and thought out.

Editorial Review:

Years after leaving the carnival, her hated first husband, and the child she could never love, Ellen has a new life, a new husband, and two beautiful children, but now the carnival is coming back to town, and Ellen is going to have to pay for her sins. Reprint.

Demon Seed

Dean R. Koontz

Amazon Price: $17.60 List Price: $17.60 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Topeka Bindery Amazon Marketplace: 3 new & used starting at $17.60

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 101 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Makes you appreciate the movie 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

In "Demon Seed", the beautiful Susan is a rich yet remote recluse - that is until her home computer is taken over by a massively powerful new supercomputer called "Proteus". The mammoth AI engine has designs on Susan, and locks her in her house where he communicates his obsessions with her, uses subliminal speech to control her, and impregnates her. Proteus's will exists within a huge computer bank taking up two floors of a nearby college, but it acts using polymorphous alloys that seem to recall T-1000 from "T2". Susan fears and hates Proteus, though when it suits her plans of escape and/or sabotage, she will at least appear to comply. As a hermit, Susan is barely missed, making her high-tech home-arrest a non-event to almost everybody. (Unfortunately, as the book makes Susan's beauty crystal clear, her absence isn't ignored enough.) As the plan of Proteus grows closer to success, Susan is convinced that the resulting fetus will be a monster, and that its birth will kill her.

Having seen the movie, I was prepared to be unsurprised, but it appears I underestimated how unsurprising this book would be. Written in the early 70's it's AI character seems extremely dated - he doesn't seem to be much of a machine at all - more like a very thin (and thin-skinned) and naïve adult. The Proteus of the story never comes across as being all that intelligent, so he doesn't play well as a preternaturally intelligent teenager. Speaking English with human contractions, freely admitting his love and desperate obsession for Susan and giving into to her requests for privacy (which she will use to win her freedom). This wouldn't be such a problem if Proteus had developed from something more primitive at the beginning - but his/its character seems pretty much unchanged from his first appearance.

Koontz's story hints at two rather interesting plot ideas that are never developed - Proteus's uncertain relationship with his programmers (especially one named Mardoun whom Proteus hates) and Susan's scarred character. Many of Proteus's ideas are communicated in chapters in which the machine makes his case for his actions - it's unclear if Proteus is having a crisis of conscious or he's trying to defend himself after he's been caught, but neither possibility threatens to enliven the otherwise turgid story. The story creates little suspense about the computer's actions - you wonder how much more interesting the story would be had Proteus hidden from us the fate of the unlucky few passers-by who were determined to find Susan. Also, while I can find the idea of an emotional machine plausible, Koontz breezes past Proteus having a bruiseable ego and a list of grudges - the very things that we tend to mark the line between people and AI. This provided great grist for the metaphysics mill in "The Matrix" movies, but Proteus isn't into discussing the divine truth of balanced and imbalanced equations - he's just got the hots for Susan.

The story erodes Proteus's technological supremacy by being set in the near future - the mid-1990s - when lower forms of AI (to Proteus, certainly not us) are in everyday use, and "bleeding" (the illegal use of computers interfaced with the human mind) is commonplace. Susan's home is already under control of a computer - a servile AI known as "father-lover", which hints that Susan is already involved in an unnatural relationship with a machine (more on that in a minute). Koontz allows only a disappointingly short depiction of this future before Proteus arrives on the scene and imprisons us with Susan. Thus we get much less a sense of Proteus's supremacy than we could have gotten.

The other big flaw is Susan - she's beautiful but otherwise incredibly boring. Looks aside, Koontz is never able to make her a memorable character. Susan's backstory looks suspiciously similar to that used for the main character in "The Sentinel" though used to far lesser effect. Putting aside likeability, Susan is still not a very appealing character, and the story compounds Proteus's violation of her by making her less a character of action than one that things just happen to. Although her body will undergo many physical changes over many months, Susan's character will remain completely pristine through the story's end. That end, BTW won't be long in coming unless you're a reader with an extreme patience for turgid prose, uninspired dialog and a lack of plot tension.

Editorial Review:

In a chilling novel of artificial intelligence by the author of Cold Fire and Twilight Eyes, a computer with human-like qualities develops criminal obsessions and a capacity for violence. Reprint.