Synopses & Reviews
Dean Koontz was born and raised in Pennsylvania. He graduated from Shippensburg State College (now Shippensberg University) and won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition while still a senior. Dean landed his first job after graduation with the Appalachian Poverty Program, where his assignment was to counsel and tutor underprivileged children on a one-to-one basis. On the first day of work, he discovered that his predecessor had been beaten up by the very children he had been trying to help and had landed in the hospital for several weeks.
The following year was filled with challenges, but Koontz never gave up on his desire to be a writer. He wrote at night and during weekends, a practice he continued after leaving the poverty program and becoming an English teacher in a suburban school district outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
After Dean had taught for a year and a half in Harrisburg, his wife, Gerda, made him an offer he couldn't refuse: I'll support you for five years, she said, and if you can't make it as a writer in that time, you'll never make it. By the end of the five years, Gerda had quit her job to manage the financial side of her husband's writing career.
Dean Koontz's books are published in 38 languages. Worldwide sales total more than 175 million copies, and that figure currently increases at a rate of more than 17 million copies a year. Six of his novels have risen to number one on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list (Lightning, Midnight, Cold Fire, Hideaway, Dragon Tears, and Intensity), and he has had eleven books at the number one position in paperback. His books have also been number one bestsellers in countries as diverse as Japan andSweden.
The New York Times has called his writing psychologically complex, masterly and satisfying. The New Orleans Times-Picayune said Koontz is, at times lyrical without ever being naive or romantic. He creates] a grotesque world, much like that of Flannery O'Conner or Walker Percy. . . scary, worthwhile reading. Of Cold Fire, a worldwide bestseller, the United Press International said, An extraordinary piece of fiction. It will be a classic.
Dean has written the screenplay for the film adaptation of his novel Midnight, and he wrote and served as executive producer on The Face of Fear for Warner Brothers-CBS Television. Phantoms, based on the author's screenplay and starring Peter O'Toole and Joanna Going, is in production at Miramax. Intensity has been filmed by Peter Guber's Mandalay Entertainment as a miniseries for the Fox Network and is scheduled to air in the spring of 1997. Mandalay and Fox will team up again to develop Dean's latest work of fiction, Sole Survivor.
Dean and Gerda Koontz live in southern California.
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
Past midnight, Chyna Shepard, twenty-six, gazes 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 Foreman 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, remorse or limits, to live with
intensity. Chyna is trapped in his deadly orbit.
Chyna is a survivor, toughened by a lifelong struggle for safety and self-respect. Now she will be tested as never before. At first her sole aim is to get out alive—until, by chance, she learns the identity of Vess’s next intended victim, a faraway innocent only she can save. Driven by a newly discovered thirst for meaning beyond mere self-preservation, Chyna musters every inner resource she has to save an endangered girl…as moment by moment, the terrifying threat of Edgler Foreman Vess intensifies.
Synopsis
Chyna Shepherd is a twenty-six-year-old woman whose deeply troubled childhood taught her the hard rules of survival, and whose adult life has been an unrelenting struggle for self-respect and safety. Now raretrust has blossomed for Chyna into friendship with the woman whose family home she is visiting for the weekend: a farm in the Napa Valley surrounded by vineyards and hills, which Chyna can see from the guest-room windowwhere she sits at one o'clock in the morning, fully dressed, unable to sleep. Suspicions she learned in childhood still make her uneasy in unfamiliar houses--even this one, where her closest friend is sound asleep down thehall. And in this case her most disturbing instincts prove reliable. A man has entered the house, a man who lives for one purpose: to satisfy all appetites as they arise, to immerse himself in sensation, to live withoutfear, remorse, or limits--to live with intensity.
His name is Edgler Foreman Vess. He likes to make words with the letters from his name--GOD, DEMON, SAVE, RAGE, ANGER, FEAR, FOREVER, are just a few ofthem--and then makes sentences with the words. One of his favorites, GOD FEARS ME, is sometimes the last thing he whispers to his victims. Edgler Vess is a self-proclaimed homicidal adventurer On thisnight, his adventure--murdering everyone in the house--becomes Chyna's long nightmare.
Trapped in Vess's deadly orbit, Chyna thinks only of getting out alive. But when she inadvertently learns theidentity of Vess's intended next victim, waiting for him far from Napa Valley, Chyna is gripped with concern for this other person, who is as innocent as Chyna, and as endangered. Driven now by a sense of responsibilityfor another, by a purpose and meaning beyond mere self-preservation, Chyna rises to unexpected heights of courage and daring--her only hope as the threat of Edgler Foreman Vess closes in and grows more horrifying moment bymoment.
Intensity unfolds over the course of just twenty-four hours, but within that brief time frame, Dean Koontz gives us what is perhaps his most inventive, emotionally intricate, and terrifyingly suspenseful novel yet.
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
The sole survivor of a homicidal sociopath's latest killing spree, Chyna Shepherd unwittingly discovers the identity of the murderer's intended next victim and confronts her own troubled past and overwhelming fear to protect herself and the life of a complete stranger from the ultimate evil. Reissue.
About the Author
Dean Koontz, the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers, lives with his wife, Gerda, and the enduring spirit of their golden retriever, Trixie, in southern California.