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The Darkest Evening of the Year

Dean Koontz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 224 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

With each of his #1 New York Times bestsellers, Dean Koontz has displayed an unparalleled ability to entertain and enlighten readers with novels that capture the essence of our times even as they bring us to the edge of our seats. Now he delivers a heart-gripping tour de force he’s been waiting years to write, at once a love story, a thrilling adventure, and a masterwork of suspense that redefines the boundaries of primal fear—and of enduring devotion.

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.

No one is surprised when Amy risks her life to save Nickie, nor when she takes the female golden into her home. The bond between Amy and Nickie is immediate and uncanny. Even her two other goldens, Fred and Ethel, recognize Nickie as special, a natural alpha. But the instant joy Nickie brings is shadowed by a series of eerie incidents. An ominous stranger. A mysterious home invasion.

And the unmistakable sense that someone is watching Amy’s every move and that, whoever it is, he’s not alone.

Someone has come back to turn Amy into the desperate, hunted creature she’s always been there to save. But now there’s no one to save Amy and those she loves. From its breathtaking opening scene to its shocking climax, The Darkest Evening of the Year is Dean Koontz at his finest, a transcendent thriller certain to have readers turning pages until dawn.

On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 820 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Don't wait for the muse...show up every day 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I don't even read Stephen King books. I don't like horror books as I have nightmares - but I know Stephen is a writing legend so this book was fantastic to read.

He writes in that "real person" way that makes you feel he is not some writing super-hero that just creates a bestseller out of nothing. He is to the point in his advice, but behind it is his story. How he and Tammy came from nothing, how his drug use crushed him, and how his accident changed the way he sees the world. He knows the power of story.

Some top pieces of advice from the book:

- Close your door and make a serious commitment to write. Don't wait for the muse to come. Show up every day and "sooner or later, he'll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic"

- Write what you love to read. Don't write in a genre to make money.

- If you don't have time to read, you don't have time to write.

- He writes by finding some characters and then putting them in a situation. They often surprise him by what happens.

- Write your first full draft with no input. Then let it rest for 6 weeks or so "like bread dough between kneadings". You will find it much easier to kill your darlings after a rest

- Revise for length. 2nd draft = 1st draft - 10%

- "Do you need someone to make you a paper badge with the word "Writer" on it before you can believe you are one? God, I hope not."

Great book!

Editorial Review:

Read by the Author

"If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write."

On Writing begins with a mesmerizing account of King's childhood and his early focus on writing to tell a story. A series of vivid memories from adolescence, college, and the struggling years that led up to his first novel, Carrie, offer a fresh and often funny perspective on the formation of a writer.

King then turns to the tools of his trade, examining crucial aspects of the wriiter's art and life, offering practical and inspiring advice on everything from plot and character development to work habits and rejection.

King was in the middle of writing this book when he was nearly killed in a widely reported accident. On Writing culminates with a profoundly moving account of how his need to write spurred him toward recovery, and brought him back to his life.

The Stand: Expanded Edition: For the First Time Complete and Uncut (Signet)

Stephen King

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 936 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

outstanding vision 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

i just recently reread this book and i am just as "in awe" today as i was 20 yrs ago. the story of good vs evil is a "grab you" and take you for a non stop nail biting ride. i really like the uncut version as you get the little back storys that you did not get 1st time around. i loved mother abigail(the messiah figure)i like that she was all to human ,i liked stu's quiet strength,randall flagg's supreme evil,larry's uncertanity,i have always liked stephan king's books, but for me this is his best effort.

One of his crowning achievements 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is one book that can testify to the fact that Stephen King is a literary genius.

Stephan King's Best 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is the best book stephan king has ever written. Sadness, terror, and a happy ending make this book amazing. It will keep you on the edge of your seat for the full 1141 pages.

Editorial Review:

It's the end of the world...

as only Stephen king could imagine it.

Humanity has been all but wiped out by a lethal virus. But the survivors are divided by light and darkness, and must face a final battle that will decide the fate of more than their lives: their very souls...

The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (King, Stephen)

Stephen King

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 694 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

That was one long Jazz solo! 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Damn. I've been pondering what to write about this for days. Ok, lets git to it! (Jazz reference will be explained :P )

Here's your first clue that the Dark Tower is not going to please everyone (actually the clue is at the very end). He cautions the reader to not read the Coda chapter beause they might dislike it. As if, after reading 1000+ pages of the book, the reader wouldn't read right through!

Second clue is in the Author's note at the end, when King says in advance not to email him to whine, and that he was a little bummed out himself with the end. To be cynical here, does King sound a tad defensive? Sure, ANY final book in a series can't please everyone. But could King's (just slightly) apologist afterword not be a bad sign that something here's gone a little `todash'?

DT is King's `sandbox', where the story can - and does - go anywhere it likes. It's his KILL BILL. It's everything AND the kitchen sink. He's grabbed everything in his mind (Doken) that's been kicking around for his entire life and put it onto paper. In this sense, the book is critic proof for the most part. If one is to point out something in the book that wasn't pulled off satisfactory, where is the context? To what other story can we compare it and say `this is the kind of book it should have been'?

What I'm saying, longwindedly, is that I could see any 2 given people feeling different about the series. To those who gave it 5 stars, cool. 1 star? I can dig. For me, I mostly accepted the conclusion, but what I would have wanted much more was to close it and say 'wow! I want to read it again. Now!' I did not get that feeling. And as fair as it is for people to completely enjoy it, it's not without it's flaws.

One of the things that annoyed me the most was how countless phrases spoken by people (or thought) are something someone else has said. Eddie is constantly thinking about what his brother would have thought of something. Susannah is always thinking about what her Dad would have said. Roland is frequently reminded of a phrase Cort would say, Etc. This was an overused technique. It was in meltdown mode here. He just would not stop.

Chapters constantly overlap, enabling the reader to see the lead up to the same event from a different participant. This is a useful tool, but it is so frequent that the result is that the reader is constantly being halted from finding out what happens next to backtrack, and in this, the final book, it the plot and pacing should be in overdrive. One imagines Roland gesturing his `get on with it' finger twirl. New characters who are introduced do not always need to have a large backstory. Sometimes it's just fine for a person to show up and help out, or get a bullet thrugh the eye. I thought this was one of the major contributors to the excessive length of the book. I don't flinch at doorstopper books, but please maximize your space and keep the gears shifting up in the plot, not down (see PILLARS OF THE EARTH for a massive but always focused story).

And now my last issue has to do with Stephen King being perhaps out of his depth in a 'fantasy' type of epic story. I have read over half of King's fiction, plus Danse Macabre and On Writing. He's a `Jazz' writer. He just goes with the flow, and thats been an asset of his for many of his other books. He's an intuitive freestyler. An improv rapper. The problem with this approach is the longer you try and 'freestyle it', the more chance you have of tripping over something as your mind races to keep track of what you're doing. He's been playing the worlds longest Jazz solo, and while he succeeded in many ways, he's hit plenty of off-notes on the way and it got a little sloppy there at the end.

King has become so entrenched in `antiplotting' that he willfully will NOT plot out anything (he says he did so with Insomnia and wasn't too hot on the result so hasn't tried it again much since). There's always an exception, but from my reading experience, you just cannot tackly a multi-volume epic in this fashion. You have to sit down and outline a little bit or else the whole thing comes off uneven.

Dark Tower readers have pretty much got the biggest imaginations out there. We've seen people walking though doors into alternate earths. We've seen Blood and Mind vampires feasting with Low Men in colorful suits wearing fake human masks. We've seen a politically-incorrect black woman with no legs who throws deadly plates. Robots who wear Dr. Doom capes, wield light sabers, and throw flying balls that are one part Harry Potter Sneetches and one part metal spheres from the movie Phantasm. We've even taken it in stride when a half Human spider gets diarrhea from eating a leprous horse. So having the story zig and zag to this ending, and have many people unsatisfied, is pause for thought. DT readers can handle anything King can throw their way in the Bizarre department, but just can't get behind this fizzled out resolution.

I think that's saying something.

Editorial Review:

Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, The Dark Tower series is unlike anything you have ever read. The final book opens like a door to the uttermost reaches of Stephen King's imagination. You've come this far. Come a little farther. Come all the way. The sound you hear may be the slamming of the door behind you. Welcome to The Dark Tower.

Brother Odd (Odd Thomas Novels)

Dean Koontz

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Total reviews: 233 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Loop me in, odd one. The words, spoken in the deep of night by a sleeping child, chill
the young man watching over her. For this was a favorite phrase of Stormy Llewellyn,
his lost love, and Stormy is dead, gone forever from this world. In the haunted halls of
the isolated monastery where he had sought peace, Odd Thomas is stalking spirits of an infinitely darker nature

Through two New York Times bestselling novels Odd Thomas has established himself as one of the most beloved and unique fictional heroes of our time. Now, wielding all the power and magic of a master storyteller at the pinnacle of his craft, Dean Koontz follows Odd into a singular new world where he hopes to make a fresh beginning—but where he will meet an adversary as old and inexorable as time itself.

St. Bartholomew’s Abbey sits in majestic solitude amid the wild peaks of California’s high Sierra, a haven for children otherwise abandoned, and a sanctuary for those seeking insight. Odd Thomas has come here to learn to live fully again, and among the eccentric monks, their other guests, and the nuns and young students of the attached convent school, he has begun to find his way. The silent spirits of the dead who visited him in his earlier life are mercifully absent, save for the bell-ringing Brother Constantine and Odd’s steady companion, the King of Rock 'n' Roll.

But trouble has a way of finding Odd Thomas, and it slinks back onto his path in the form of the sinister bodachs he has met previously, the black shades who herald death and disaster, and who come late one December night to hover above the abbey’s most precious charges. For Odd is about to face an enemy who eclipses any he has yet encountered, as he embarks on a journey of mystery, wonder, and sheer suspense that surpasses all that has come before.

Blaze: A Novel

Richard Bachman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 149 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The last of the Richard Bachman novels, recently recovered and published for the first time. Stephen King's "dark half" may have saved the best for last.

A fellow named Richard Bachman wrote Blaze in 1973 on an Olivetti typewriter, then turned the machine over to Stephen King, who used it to write Carrie. Bachman died in 1985 ("cancer of the pseudonym"), but in late 2006 King found the original typescript of Blaze among his papers at the University of Maine's Fogler Library ("How did this get here?!"), and decided that with a little revision it ought to be published.

Blaze is the story of Clayton Blaisdell, Jr. -- of the crimes committed against him and the crimes he commits, including his last, the kidnapping of a baby heir worth millions. Blaze has been a slow thinker since childhood, when his father threw him down the stairs -- and then threw him down again. After escaping an abusive institution for boys when he was a teenager, Blaze hooks up with George, a seasoned criminal who thinks he has all the answers. But then George is killed, and Blaze, though haunted by his partner, is on his own.

He becomes one of the most sympathetic criminals in all of literature. This is a crime story of surprising strength and sadness, with a suspenseful current sustained by the classic workings of fate and character -- as taut and riveting as Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.

The Good Guy

Dean Koontz

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Total reviews: 184 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

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.”

The stranger walks out, leaving a photo of the pretty woman marked for death, and her address. But things are about to get worse. In minutes another stranger sits next to Tim. This one is a cold-blooded killer who believes Tim is the man who has hired him.

Thinking fast, Tim says, “I’ve had a change of heart. You get ten thousand—for doing nothing. Call it a no-kill fee.” He keeps the photo and gives the money to the hired killer. And when Tim secretly follows the man out of the tavern, he gets a further shock: the hired killer is a cop.

Suddenly, Tim Carrier, an ordinary guy, is at the center of a mystery of extraordinary proportions, the one man who can save an innocent life and stop a killer far more powerful than any cop…and as relentless as evil incarnate. But first Tim must discover within himself the capacity for selflessness, endurance, and courage that can turn even an ordinary man into a hero, inner resources that will transform his idea of who he is and what it takes to be The Good Guy.


From the Hardcover edition.

Odd Thomas

Dean Koontz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 478 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“The dead don't talk. I don't know why.” 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. Sometimes they want justice, and Odd’s otherworldly tips to Pico Mundo's sympathetic police chief, Wyatt Porter, can solve a crime. Occasionally they can prevent one. But this time it's different.

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. His most ominous clue is a page ripped from a day-by-day calendar for August 15.

Today is August 14.

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 nightmares—and a testament by which to live: sanely if not safely, with courage, humor, and a full heart that even in the darkness must persevere.


From the Hardcover edition.

Forever Odd (Odd Thomas Novels)

Dean Koontz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 237 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Every so often a character so captures the hearts and imaginations of readers that he seems to take on a life of his own long after the final page is turned. For such a character, one book is not enough—readers must know what happens next. Now Dean Koontz returns with the novel his fans have been demanding. With the emotional power and sheer storytelling artistry that are his trademarks, Koontz takes up once more the story of a unique young hero and an eccentric little town in a tale that is equal parts suspense and terror, adventure and mystery—and altogether irresistibly odd.

We’re all a little odd beneath the surface. He’s the most unlikely hero you’ll ever meet—an ordinary guy with a modest job you might never look at twice. But there’s so much more to any of us than meets the eye—and that goes triple for Odd Thomas. For Odd lives always between two worlds in the small desert town of Pico Mundo, where the heroic and the harrowing are everyday events. Odd never asked to communicate with the dead—it’s something that just happened. But as the unofficial goodwill ambassador between our world and theirs, he’s got a duty to do the right thing. That’s the way Odd sees it and that’s why he’s won hearts on both sides of the divide between life and death.

A childhood friend of Odd’s has disappeared. The worst is feared. But as Odd applies his unique talents to the task of finding the missing person, he discovers something worse than a dead body, encounters an enemy of exceptional cunning, and spirals into a vortex of terror. Once again Odd will stand against our worst fears. Around him will gather new allies and old, some living and some not. For in the battle to come, there can be no innocent bystanders, and every sacrifice can tip the balance between despair and hope. Whether you’re meeting Odd Thomas for the first time or he’s already an old friend, you’ll be led on an unforgettable journey through a world of terror, wonder and delight—to a revelation that can change your life. And you can have no better guide than Odd Thomas.


From the Hardcover edition.

Lightning

Dean Koontz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 265 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

My first Koontz novel 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

And I was not dissapointed! I understand that this book is a little different than most of his stuff, but that is what makes him such a great author, is that he can transcend genres. I am very intruiged by the concept of time travel, and this is certainly one of the best and smartest time travel books I have read. Also, even though the book is 20 years old, it still reads great. It was kind of fun to have a flashback to my child hood considering I am about the same age as her Laura's son Chris. Great book!

Editorial Review:

A storm struck on the night Laura Shane was born, and there was a strangeness about the weather that people would remember for years. But even more mysterious was the blond-haired stranger who appeared out of nowhere – the man who saved Laura from a fatal delivery. Years later – another bolt of lightning – and the stranger returned, again to save Laura from tragedy. Was he the guardian angel he seemed? The devil in disguise? Or the master of a haunting destiny beyond time and space?