Committed now, she followed the pickets around the side of the house. As the clouds lowered and the flag rustled in a breeze that smelled faintly of either the rain to come or the waters of the lake, she climbed the porch steps and rang the bell.
A moment later, a slim, attractive, fiftyish woman opened the door. She wore jeans, a sweater, and a knee-length apron decorated with needlepoint strawberries.
“Mrs. Lambert?” Jane asked.
“Yes?”
“We have a bond that I hope I can call upon.”
Gwyneth Lambert raised a half smile and her eyebrows.
Jane said, “We both married Marines.”
“That’s a bond, all right. How can I help you?”
“We’re also both widows. And I believe we have the same people to blame for that.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dean Koontz is the author of more than a dozen New York Times #1 bestsellers. His books have sold over five hundred million copies worldwide, a figure that increases by more than seventeen million copies per year, and his work is published in thirty-eight languages. He was born and raised in Pennsylvania and lives with his wife, Gerda, and their dog, Elsa, in Southern California
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
American oddball illustrator and designer Oliver Barrett grew up in Ohio on a steady diet of science fiction, role-playing games, and below-average athletics. He cut his teeth working as an art director at advertising and branding agencies before setting off on his own to make his mark on the world. This background set the stage for a career of clever concepts, frenetic line work, and engaging imagery that’s sought after by the Nikes, Amazons, and Netflixes of the globe, to name a few. He can also deadlift almost four hundred pounds.
ALSO BY DEAN KOONTZ
Ashley Bell
The City
Innocence
77 Shadow Street
What the Night Knows
Breathless
Relentless
Your Heart Belongs to Me
The Darkest Evening of the Year
The Good Guy
The Husband
Velocity
Life Expectancy
The Taking
The Face
By the Light of the Moon
One Door Away from Heaven
From the Corner of His Eye
False Memory
Seize the Night
Fear Nothing
Mr. Murder
Dragon Tears
Hideaway
Cold Fire
The Bad Place
Midnight
Lightning
Watchers
Strangers
Twilight Eyes
Darkfall
Phantoms
Whispers
The Mask
The Vision
The Face of Fear
Night Chills
Shattered
The Voice of the Night
The Servants of Twilight
The House of Thunder
The Key to Midnight
The Eyes of Darkness
Shadowfires
Winter Moon
The Door to December
Dark Rivers of the Heart
Icebound
Strange Highways
Intensity
Sole Survivor
Ticktock
The Funhouse
Demon Seed
Odd Thomas
Odd Thomas
Forever Odd
Brother Odd
Odd Hours
Odd Interlude
Odd Apocalypse
Deeply Odd
Saint Odd
Frankenstein
Prodigal Son
City of Night
Dead and Alive
Lost Souls
The Dead Town
Nonfiction
A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog Named Trixie
PRAISE FOR DEAN KOONTZ
“Dean Koontz is not just a master of our darkest dreams, but also a literary juggler.”
“Dean Koontz writes page-turners, middle-of-the-night-sneak-up-behind-you suspense thrillers. He touches our hearts and tingles our spines.”
“A modern Swift… a master satirist.”
“Koontz has a knack for making the bizarre and uncanny seem as commonplace as a sunrise. BOTTOM LINE: the Dean of Suspense.”
“If Stephen King is the Rolling Stones of novels, Koontz is the Beatles.”
“A superb plotter and wordsmith. He chronicles the hopes and fears of our time in broad strokes and fine detail, using popular fiction to explore the human condition [and] demonstrating that the real horror of life is found not in monsters, but within the human psyche.”
“Far more than a genre writer. Characters and the search for meaning, exquisitely crafted, are the soul of his work. This is why his novels will be read long after the ghosts and monsters of most genre writers have been consigned to the attic. One of the master storytellers of this or any age.”
“Dean Koontz almost occupies a genre of his own. He is a master at building suspense and holding the reader spellbound.”
“Demanding much of itself, Koontz’s style bleaches out clichés while showing a genius for details. He leaves his competitors buried in the dust.”
“Koontz has always had near-Dickensian powers of description, and an ability to yank us from one page to the next that few novelists can match.”
“Tumbling, hallucinogenic prose.”