Fright is a special thing. Some people embrace it and others avoid it whenever possible. For the former group of people, Halloween is a special time of year. Though costumes have evolved from simply scary (ghosts, goblins, witches) to the humorous, timely, clever guises put together in more recent years, the main artery of the holiday still pulses with creepiness. And sometimes one day of creepiness just isn’t enough, which is why I bring up Stephen King.

Stephen King knows fright. He knows how to tap into the adrenalized page-turning impulses of that group of folks who embrace fear, who savor the quickening pulse, the shortened breath, and the can’t-look-but-can’t-look-away draw of horror. King’s brand of fright, though, goes beyond witches and goblins and ghosts, to suss out our even deeper fears, the fears that make us human, that make us fallible, that make us capable of feeling terror. And to celebrate those fears, herewith, five classic Stephen King books that terrorized me over the course of my life.

Carrie
A teenager who doesn’t feel she belongs, an overbearing mother, questions of faith, and prom: It’s a recipe for terror, sure, but in King’s 1974 debut novel, he brought a whole new horror to high school – by adding a smidgen of telekinesis. If you’ve not yet read Carrie, it’s the one to start with. Bonus: Keep an eye out for the forthcoming adaptation starring Chloe Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore.

‘Salem’s Lot
Following up Carrie was no easy task – but from telekinesis to vampires, King quickly proved his talent for the horrific. In his second published novel, King brings writer Ben Mears to the small town in Maine where he grew up, where he begins work on his next book. Before long, though, a boy’s disappearance coupled with the arrival of a strange pair prove that though you may be able to go home again – things are often not the same.

The Shining
The Shining, quite possibly the novel that launched King to stardom, is a story familiar to most of us, thanks in part to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of the 1977 novel. Jack Torrance moves his family to the Overlook Resort, which will remain otherwise empty for the duration of the winter, as Jack acts as caretaker. The horror that ensues is some of King’s best work – and if you’ve only become familiar with it via film, do yourself (or, your nightmares, at least) a favor and pick up the original work.

Firestarter
Firestarter begs the question: How well do we really know our parents? And further, how much are we truly affected by their actions? This is Stephen King, though, so these questions are not tiptoed around. In this 1980 novel, Andy’s college-age participation in the testing of an LSD-like drug comes back to haunt him as he realizes the powers of the daughter born to him and his wife, who had also participated in the experiment. Oh, and here King adds an additional element of terror: government conspiracy.

Thinner
I can still hear the old gypsy in King’s 1984 novel (published under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman), in the gravelly voice I’d imagined him having, as he utters one word: “Thinner.” The curse was in place: Billy Halleck, fat as can be – and found not guilty of vehicular manslaughter in the accident that caused the death of the gypsy’s daughter – begins losing weight at an incredible pace, wasting away to near-nothing. In typical King fashion, though, the first fright is only the beginning, as Billy finds he’s not the only one cursed – and ultimately, not the only one horrifically affected by his actions.

Dean Koontz's beloved character Odd Thomas returns in his fifth book, Odd Apocalypse, and if you're a fan of the series you won't be disappointed. Unfortunately, things aren't looking up for our poor hero, Odd Thomas, the twenty-something fry cook from Pico Mundo, California, who has the unfortunate ability to interact with the dead. Ever on the move in order to evade lethal pursuers, Odd Thomas finds himself being confronted by the ghost of a woman on a horse who leads him to the mysterious and haunting Roseland, an impeccably splendid mansion in the Hollywood Hills. At first, Odd and his traveling companion Annamaria find solace in Roseland and its reclusive billionaire owner, but as dusk settles it's obvious that the estate isn't everything that it appears and that Odd isn't as safe as he thought.

Odd Thomas has become one of the most well-known and best-selling characters today; if you're not familiar with him, you can read up on his backstory in the first book, Odd Thomas. Because of his special ability, he is frequently visited by ghosts who have unfinished business, which he always feels obligated to resolve. This has led Odd to abandon his hometown in pursuit of life answers, but trouble always seems to follow wherever he turns up. Further complicating the situation is the fact that the needy spirits can't speak to him, forcing him into a constant game of charades. Odd Thomas has become so well known that the spirits of Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and even Alfred Hitchcock have turned to him for help.

Despite every effort to simplify, Odd Thomas's life becomes more complicated at every turn, but he continues on with an upbeat outlook and a sense of humor. Odd Apocalypse doesn't fail to once again up the ante, making the game all the more challenging and putting poor Odd Thomas in yet another perilous position he couldn't possibly get himself out of.

Find out more about Odd Thomas here.

About This Book:

The stallion reared over me, silently slashing the air with the hooves of its forelegs, a creature of such immense power that I stumbled backward even though I knew that it was as immaterial as a dream. . . .

The woman astride the ghostly mount reaches out desperately, the latest spirit to enlist the aid of Odd Thomas, the unassuming young fry cook whose gift—or curse—it is to see the shades of the restless dead, and to help them when he can. This mission of mercy will lead Odd through realms of darkness he has never before encountered, as he probes the long-held secrets of a sinister estate and those who inhabit it.

ODD APOCALYPSE

Once presided over by a flamboyant Hollywood mogul during the Roaring ’20s, the magnificent West Coast property known as Roseland is now home to a reclusive billionaire financier and his faithful servants. And, at least for the moment, it’s also a port in the storm for Odd Thomas and his traveling companion, the inscrutably charming Annamaria, the Lady of the Bell. In the wake of Odd’s most recent clash with lethal adversaries, the opulent manor’s comforts should be welcome. But there’s far more to Roseland than meets even the extraordinary eye of Odd, who soon suspects it may be more hell than haven.

A harrowing taste of Roseland’s terrors convinces Odd that it’s time to hit the road again. Still, the prescient Annamaria insists that they’ve been led there for a reason, and he’s promised to do his best for the ghost on horseback. Just how deep and dreadful are the mysteries Roseland and her masters have kept for nearly a century? And what consequences await whoever is brave, or mad, enough to confront the most profound breed of evil? Odd only knows. Like his acclaimed creator, the irresistible Odd Thomas is in top-notch form—as he takes on what may well be the most terrifying challenge yet in his curious career.

Watch the Odd Apocalypse cover come to life! See what Odd sees with this special augmented reality Odd Apocalypse book cover! Using Dean Koontz’s mobile application or your computer webcam, you can watch one of Odd’s visions come alive.

ACCLAIM FOR DEAN KOONTZ AND HIS ODD THOMAS NOVELS

“This is Koontz working at his pinnacle, providing terrific entertainment that deals seriously with some of the deepest themes of human existence: the nature of evil, the grip of fate and the power of love.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review), on Odd Thomas

“Supernatural thrills with a side of laughs.”—The Denver Post, on Brother Odd

“The nice young fry cook with the occult powers is Koontz’s most likable creation . . . candid, upright, amusing and sometimes withering.”—The New York Times

Excerpt:

One

Near sunset of my second full day as a guest in Roseland, crossing the immense lawn between the main house and the eucalyptus grove, I halted and pivoted, warned by instinct. Racing toward me, the great black stallion was as mighty a horse as I had ever seen. Earlier, in a book of breeds, I had identified it as a Friesian. The blonde who rode him wore a white nightgown. As silent as any spirit, the woman urged the horse forward, faster. On hooves that made no sound, the steed ran through me with no effect.

I have certain talents. In addition to being a pretty good short-order cook, I have an occasional prophetic dream. And in the waking world, I sometimes see the spirits of the lingering dead who, for various reasons, are reluctant to move on to the Other Side.

This long-dead horse and rider, now only spirits in our world, knew that no one but I could see them. After appearing to me twice the previous day and once this morning, but at a distance, the woman seemed to have decided to get my attention in an aggressive fashion. Mount and mistress raced around me in a wide arc. I turned to follow them, and they cantered toward me once more but then halted. The stallion reared over me, silently slashing the air with the hooves of its forelegs, nostrils flared, eyes rolling, a creature of such immense power that I stumbled backward even though I knew that it was as immaterial as a dream.

Spirits are solid and warm to my touch, as real to me in that way as is anyone alive. But I am not solid to them, and they can neither ruffle my hair nor strike a death blow at me.

Because my sixth sense complicates my existence, I try otherwise to keep my life simple. I have fewer possessions than a monk. I have no time or peace to build a career as a fry cook or as anything else. I never plan for the future, but wander into it with a smile on my face, hope in my heart, and the hair up on the nape of my neck.

Bareback on the Friesian, the barefoot beauty wore white silk and white lace and wild red ribbons of blood both on her gown and in her long blond hair, though I could see no wound. Her nightgown was rucked up to her thighs, and her knees pressed against the stallion’s heaving sides. In her left hand, she twined a fistful of the horse’s mane, as if even in death she must hold fast to her mount to keep their spirits joined.

If spurning a gift weren’t ungrateful, I would at once return my supernatural sight. I would be content to spend my days whipping up omelets that make you groan with pleasure and pancakes so fluffy that the slightest breeze might float them off your plate.

Every talent is unearned, however, and with it comes a solemn obligation to use it as fully and as wisely as possible. If I didn’t believe in the miraculous nature of talent and in the sacred duty of the recipient, by now I would have gone so insane that I’d qualify for numerous high government positions.

As the stallion danced on its hind legs, the woman reached out with her right arm and pointed down at me, as if to say that she knew I saw her and that she had a message to convey to me. Her lovely face was grim with determination, and those cornflower-blue eyes that were not bright with life were nonetheless bright with anguish.

When she dismounted, she didn’t drop to the ground but instead floated off the horse and almost seemed to glide across the grass to me. The blood faded from her hair and nightgown, and she manifested as she had looked in life before her fatal wounds, as if she might be concerned that the gore would repel me. I felt her touch when she put one hand to my face, as though she, a ghost, had more difficulty believing in me than I had believing in her.

Behind the woman, the sun melted into the distant sea, and several distinctively shaped clouds glowed like a fleet of ancient warships with their masts and sails ablaze.

As I saw her anguish relent to a tentative hope, I said, “Yes, I can see you. And if you’ll let me, I can help you cross over.”

She shook her head violently and took a step backward, as if she feared that with some touch or spoken spell I might release her from this world. But I have no such power.

I thought I understood the reason for her reaction. “You were murdered, and before you go from this world, you want to be sure that justice will be done.”

She nodded but then shook her head, as if to say, Yes, but not only that.

Being more familiar with the deceased than I might wish to be, I can tell you from considerable personal experience that the spirits of the lingering dead don’t talk. I don’t know why. Even when they have been brutally murdered and are desperate to see their assailants brought to justice, they are unable to convey essential information to me either by phone or face-to-face. Neither do they send text messages. Maybe that’s because, given the opportunity, they would reveal something about death and the world beyond that we the living are not meant to know.

Anyway, the dead can be even more frustrating to deal with than are many of the living, which is astonishing when you consider that it’s the living who run the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Shadowless in the last direct light of the drowning sun, the Friesian stood with head high, as proud as any patriot before the sight of a beloved flag. But his only flag was the golden hair of his mistress. He grazed no more in this place but reserved his appetite for Elysian fields.

Approaching me again, the blonde stared at me so intensely that I could feel her desperation. She formed a cradle with her arms and rocked it back and forth.

I said, “A baby?”

Yes. 

“Your baby?”

She nodded but then shook her head.

Brow furrowed, biting her lower lip, the woman hesitated before holding out one hand, palm down, perhaps four and a half feet above the ground.

Practiced as I am at spirit charades, I figured that she must be indicating the current height of the baby whom she’d once borne, not an infant now but perhaps nine or ten years old. “Not your baby any longer. Your child.”

She nodded vigorously.

“Your child still lives?”

Yes. 

“Here in Roseland?”

Yes, yes, yes.

Ablaze in the western sky, those ancient warships built of clouds were burning down from fiery orange to bloody red as the heavens slowly darkened toward purple.

When I asked if her child was a girl or a boy, she indicated the latter.

Although I knew of no children on this estate, I considered the anguish that carved her face, and I asked the most obvious question: “And your son is . . . what? In trouble here?”

Yes, yes, yes.

Far to the east of the main house in Roseland, out of sight beyond a hurst of live oaks, was a riding ring bristling with weeds. A half-collapsed ranch fence encircled it.

The stables,  however, looked as if they had been built last week. Curiously, all the stalls were spotless; not one piece of straw or a single cobweb could be found, no dust, as though the place was thoroughly scrubbed on a regular basis. Judging by that tidiness, and by a smell as crisp and pure as that of a winter day after a snowfall, no horses had been kept there in decades; evidently, the woman in white had been dead a long time.

How, then, could her child be only nine or ten?

Some spirits are exhausted or at least taxed by lengthy contact, and they fade away for hours or days before they renew their power to manifest. This woman seemed to have a strong will that would maintain her apparition. But suddenly, as the air shimmered and a strange sour-yellow light flooded across the land, she and the stallion — which perhaps had been killed in the same event that claimed the life of his mistress — were gone. They didn’t fade or wither from the edges toward the center, as some other displaced souls occasionally did, but vanished in the instant that the light changed.

Precisely when the red dusk became yellow, a wind sprang out of the west, lashing the eucalyptus grove far behind me, rustling through the California live oaks to the south, and blustering my hair into my eyes.

I looked into a sky where the sun had not quite yet gone down, as if some celestial timekeeper had wound the cosmic clock backward a few minutes.

That impossibility was exceeded by another. Yellow from horizon to horizon, without the grace of a single cloud, the heavens were ribboned with what appeared to be high-altitude rivers of smoke or soot. Gray currents streaked through with black. Moving at tremendous velocity. They widened, narrowed, serpentined, sometimes merged, but came apart again.

I had no way of knowing what those rivers were, but the sight strummed a dark chord of intuition. I suspected that high above me raced torrents of ashes, soot, and fine debris that had once been cities, metropolises pulverized by explosions unprecedented in power and number, then vomited high into the atmosphere, caught and held in orbit by the jet stream, by the many jet streams of a war-transformed troposphere.

My waking visions are even rarer than my prophetic dreams. When one afflicts me, I am aware that it’s an internal event, occurring only in my mind. But this spectacle of wind and baleful light and horrific patterns in the sky was no vision. It was as real as a kick in the groin.

Clenched like a fist, my heart pounded, pounded, as across the yellow vault came a flock of creatures like nothing I had seen in flight before. Their true nature was not easily discerned. They were larger than eagles but seemed more like bats, many hundreds of them, incoming from the northwest, descending as they approached. As my heart pounded harder, it seemed that my reason must be knocking to be let out so that the madness of this scene could fully invade me.

Be assured that I am not insane, neither as a serial killer is insane nor in the sense that a man is insane who wears a colander as a hat to prevent the CIA from controlling his mind. I dislike hats of any kind, though I have nothing against colanders properly used.

I have killed more than once, but always in self-defense or to protect the innocent. Such killing cannot be called murder. If you think that it is murder, you’ve led a sheltered life, and I envy you.

Unarmed and greatly outnumbered by the incoming swarm, not sure if they were intent upon destroying me or oblivious of my existence, I had no illusions that self-defense might be possible. I turned and ran down the long slope toward the eucalyptus grove that sheltered the guesthouse where I was staying.

The impossibility of my predicament didn’t inspire the briefest hesitation. Now within two months of my twenty-second birthday, I had been marinated for most of my life in the impossible, and I knew that the true nature of the world was weirder than any bizarre fabric that anyone’s mind might weave from the warp and weft of imagination’s loom.

As I raced eastward, breaking into a sweat as much from fear as from exertion, behind and above me arose the shrill cries of the flock and then the leathery flapping of their wings. Daring to glance back, I saw them rocking through the turbulent wind, their eyes as yellow as the hideous sky. They funneled toward me as though some master to which they answered had promised to work a dark version of the miracle of loaves and fishes, making of me an adequate meal for these multitudes.

When the air shimmered and the yellow light was replaced by red, I stumbled, fell, and rolled onto my back. Raising my hands to ward off the ravenous horde, I found the sky familiar and nothing winging through it except a pair of shore birds in the distance.

I was back in the Roseland where the sun had set, where the sky was largely purple, and where the once-blazing galleons in the air had burned down to sullen red.

Gasping for breath, I got to my feet and watched for a moment as the celestial sea turned black and the last embers of the cloud ships sank into the rising stars.

Although I was not afraid of the night, prudence argued that I would not be wise to linger in it. I continued toward the eucalyptus grove.

The transformed sky and the winged menace, as well as the spirits of the woman and her horse, had given me something to think about. Considering the unusual nature of my life, I need not worry that, when it comes to food for thought, I will ever experience famine.

Two

After the woman, the horse, and the yellow sky, I didn’t think I would sleep that night. Lying awake in low lamplight, I found my thoughts following morbid paths.

We are buried when we’re born. The world is a place of graves occupied and graves potential. Life is what happens while we wait for our appointment with the mortician.

Although it is demonstrably true, you are no more likely to see that sentiment on a Starbucks cup than you are the words COFFEE KILLS.

Even before coming to Roseland, I had been in a mood. I was sure I’d cheer up soon. I always do. Regardless of what horror transpires, given a little time, I am as reliably buoyant as a helium balloon.

I don’t know the reason for that buoyancy. Understanding it might be a key part of my life assignment. Perhaps when I realize why I can find humor in the darkest of darknesses, the mortician will call my number and the time will have come to choose my casket. Actually, I don’t expect to have a casket. The Celestial Office of Life Themes — or whatever it might be called — seems to have decided that my journey through this world will be especially complicated by absurdity and violence of the kind in which the human species takes such pride. Consequently, I’ll probably be torn limb from limb by an angry mob of antiwar protesters and thrown on a bonfire. Or I’ll be struck down by a Rolls- Royce driven by an advocate for the poor.

Certain that I wouldn’t sleep, I slept.

At four o’clock that February morning, I was deep in disturbing dreams of Auschwitz.

My characteristic buoyancy would not occur just yet.

I woke to a familiar cry from beyond the half-open window of my suite in Roseland’s guesthouse. As silvery as the pipes in a Celtic song, the wail sewed threads of sorrow and longing through the night and the woods. It came again, nearer, and then a third time from a distance.

These lamentations were brief, but the previous two days, when they woke me too near dawn, I could not sleep anymore. The cry was like a wire in the blood, conducting a current through every artery and vein. I’d never heard a lonelier sound, and it electrified me with a dread that I could not explain.

In this instance, I awakened from the Nazi death camp. I am not a Jew, but in the nightmare I was Jewish and terrified of dying twice. Dying twice made perfect sense in sleep, but not in the waking world, and the eerie call in the night at once pricked the air out of the vivid dream, which shriveled away from me.

According to the current master of Roseland and everyone who worked for him, the source of the disturbing cry was a loon. They were either ignorant or lying.

I didn’t mean to insult my host and his staff. After all, I am ignorant of many things because I am required to maintain a narrow focus. An ever-increasing number of people seem determined to kill me, so that I need to concentrate on staying alive.

But even in the desert, where I was born and raised, there are ponds and lakes, man-made yet adequate for loons. Their cries were melancholy but never desolate like this, curiously hopeful whereas these were despairing.

Roseland, a private estate, was a mile from the California coast. But loons are loons wherever they nest; they don’t alter their voices to conform to the landscape. They’re birds, not politicians.

Besides, loons aren’t roosters with a timely duty. Yet this wailing came between midnight and dawn, not thus far in sunlight. And it seemed to me that the earlier it came in the new day, the more often it was repeated during the remaining hours of darkness.

I threw back the covers, sat on the edge of the bed, and said, “Spare me that I may serve,” which is a morning prayer that my Granny Sugars taught me to say when I was a little boy.

Pearl Sugars was a professional poker player who frequently sat in private games against card sharks twice her size, guys who didn’t lose with a smile. They didn’t even smile when they won. My grandma was a hard drinker. She ate a boatload of pork fat in various forms. Only when sober, Granny Sugars drove so fast that police in several Southwestern states knew her as Pedal-to-the-Metal Pearl. Yet she lived long and died in her sleep.

I hoped her prayer worked as well for me as it did for her; but recently I had taken to following that first request with another. This morning, it was: “Please don’t let anyone kill me by shoving an angry lizard down my throat.”

That might seem like a snarky request to make of God, but a psychotic and enormous man once threatened to force-feed me an exotic sharp-toothed lizard that was in a frenzy after being dosed with methamphetamine. He would have succeeded, too, if we hadn’t been on a construction site and if I hadn’t found a way to use an insulation-foam sprayer as a weapon. He promised to track me down when released from prison and finish the job with a different lizard.

On other days recently, I had asked God to spare me from death by a car-crushing machine in a salvage yard, from death by a nail gun, from death by being chained to dead men and dropped in a lake. . . . These were ordeals that I should not have survived in days past, and I figured that if I ever faced one of those threats again, I wouldn’t be lucky enough to escape the same fate twice.

My name isn’t Lucky Thomas. It’s Odd Thomas.

It really is. Odd.

My beautiful but psychotic mother claims the birth certificate was supposed to read Todd. My father, who lusts after teenage girls and peddles property on the moon — though from a comfortable office here on Earth — sometimes says they meant to name me Odd.

I tend to believe my father in this matter. Although if he isn’t lying, this might be the only entirely truthful thing he’s ever said to me.

Having showered before retiring the previous evening, I now dressed without delay, to be ready for . . . whatever.

Day by day, Roseland felt more like a trap. I sensed hidden deadfalls that might be triggered with a misstep, bringing down a crushing weight upon me.

Although I wanted to leave, I had an obligation to remain, a duty to the Lady of the Bell. She had come with me from Magic Beach, which lay farther north along the coast, where I’d almost been killed in a variety of ways.

Duty doesn’t need to call; it only needs to whisper. And if you heed the call, no matter what happens, you have no need for regret.

Stormy Llewellyn, whom I loved and lost, believed that this strife-torn world is boot camp, preparation for the great adventure that comes between our first life and our eternal life. She said that we go wrong only when we are deaf to duty.

We are all the walking wounded in a world that is a war zone. Everything we love will be taken from us, everything, last of all life itself.

Yet everywhere I look, I find great beauty in this battlefield, and grace and the promise of joy.

The stone tower in the eucalyptus grove, where I currently lived, was a thing of rough beauty, in part because of the contrast between its solemn mass and the delicacy of the silvery- green leaves that cascaded across the limbs of the surrounding trees.

Square rather than columnar, thirty feet on a side, the tower stood sixty feet high if you counted the bronze dome but not the unusual finial that looked like the much-enlarged stem, crown, and case bow of an old pocket watch.

They called the tower a guesthouse, but surely it had not always been used for that purpose. The narrow casement windows opened inward to admit fresh air, because vertical iron bars prevented them from opening outward.

Barred windows suggested a prison or a fortress. In either case, an enemy was implied.

The door was ironbound timber that looked as though it had been crafted to withstand a battering ram if not even cannonballs. Beyond lay a stone-walled vestibule.

In the vestibule, to the left, stairs led to a higher apartment. Annamaria, the Lady of the Bell, was staying there.

The inner vestibule door, directly opposite the outer, opened to the ground-floor unit, where the current owner of Roseland, Noah Wolflaw, had invited me to stay.

My quarters consisted of a comfortable sitting room, a smaller bedroom, both paneled in mahogany, and a richly tiled bathroom that dated to the 1920s. The style was Craftsman: heavy wood and cushion armchairs, trestle tables with mortise joints and peg decoration.

I don’t know if the stained-glass lamps were genuine Tiffany, but they might have been. Perhaps they were bought back in the day when they weren’t yet museum pieces of fantastic value, and they remained in this out-of-the-way tower simply because they had always been here. One quality of Roseland was a casual indifference to the wealth that it represented.

Each guest suite featured a kitchenette in which the pantry and the refrigerator had been stocked with the essentials. I could cook simple meals or have any reasonable request filled by the estate’s chef, Mr. Shilshom, who would send over a tray from the main house.

Breakfast more than an hour before dawn didn’t appeal to me. I would feel like a condemned man trying to squeeze in as many meals as possible on his last day, before submitting to a lethal injection.

Our host had warned me to remain indoors between dusk and dawn. He claimed that one or more mountain lions had recently been marauding through other estates in the area, killing two dogs, a horse, and peacocks kept as pets. The beast might be bold enough to chow down on a wandering guest of Roseland if given a chance.

I was sufficiently informed about mountain lions to know that they were as likely to hunt in daylight as in the dark. I suspected that Noah Wolflaw’s warning was intended to ensure that I would hesitate to investigate the so-called loon and other peculiarities of Roseland by night.

Before dawn on that Monday in February, I left the guest tower and locked the ironbound door behind me.

Both Annamaria and I had been given keys and had been sternly instructed to keep the tower locked at all times. When I noted that mountain lions could not turn a knob and open a door, whether it was locked or not, Mr. Wolflaw declared that we were living in the early days of a new dark age, that walled estates and the guarded redoubts of the wealthy were not secure anymore, that “bold thieves, rapists, journalists, murderous revolutionaries, and far worse” might turn up anywhere.

His eyes didn’t spin like pinwheels, neither did smoke curl from his ears when he issued this warning, though his dour expression and ominous tone struck me as cartoonish. I still thought that he must be kidding, until I met his eyes long enough to discern that he was as paranoid as a three-legged cat encircled by wolves.

Whether his paranoia was justified or not, I suspected that neither thieves nor rapists, nor journalists, nor revolutionaries were what worried him. His terror was reserved for the undefined “far worse.”

Leaving the guest tower, I followed a flagstone footpath through the fragrant eucalyptus grove to the brink of the gentle slope that led up to the main house. The vast manicured lawn before me was as smooth as carpet underfoot.

In the wild fields around the periphery of the estate, through which I had rambled on other days, snowy woodrush and ribbon grass and feathertop thrived among the majestic California live oaks that seemed to have been planted in cryptic but harmonious patterns.

No place of my experience had ever been more beautiful than Roseland, and no place had ever felt more evil.

Some people will say that a place is just a place, that it can’t be good or evil. Others will say that evil as a real power or entity is a hopelessly old-fashioned idea, that the wicked acts of men and women can be explained by one psychological theory or another.

Those are people to whom I never listen. If I listened to them, I would already be dead.

Regardless of the weather, even under an ordinary sky, daylight in Roseland seemed to be the product of a sun different from the one that brightened the rest of the world. Here, the familiar appeared strange, and even the most solid, brightly illuminated object had the quality of a mirage.

Afoot at night, as now, I had no sense of privacy. I felt that I was followed, watched.

On other occasions, I had heard a rustle that the still air could not explain, a muttered word or two not quite comprehensible, hurried footsteps. My stalker, if I had one, was always screened by shrubbery or by moonshadows, or he monitored me from around a corner.

A suspicion of homicide motivated me to prowl Roseland by night. The woman on horseback was a victim of someone, haunting Roseland in search of justice for her and her son.

Roseland encompassed fifty-two acres in Montecito, a wealthy community adjacent to Santa Barbara, which itself was as far from being a shantytown as any Ritz-Carlton was far from being mistaken for the Bates Motel in Psycho.

The original house and other buildings were constructed in 1922 and ’23 by a newspaper mogul, Constantine Cloyce, who was also the cofounder of one of the film industry’s legendary studios. He had a mansion in Malibu, but Roseland was his special retreat, an elaborate man cave where he could engage in such masculine pursuits as horses, skeet shooting, small-game hunting, all-night poker sessions, and perhaps drunken head-butting contests.

Cloyce had also been an enthusiast of unusual — even bizarre — theories ranging from those of the famous medium and psychic Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky to those of the world-renowned physicist and inventor Nikola Tesla.

Some believed that Cloyce, here at Roseland, had once secretly financed research and development into such things as death rays, contemporary approaches to alchemy, and telephones that would allow you to talk to the dead. But then some people also believe that Social Security is solvent.

From the edge of the eucalyptus grove, I gazed up the long easy slope toward the main house, where Constantine Cloyce had died in his sleep in 1948, at the age of seventy. On the barrel-tile roof, patches of phosphorescent lichen glowed in the moonlight.

Also in 1948, the sole heir to an immense South American mining fortune bought Roseland completely furnished when he was just thirty and sold it, furnished, forty years later. He was reclusive, and no one seems to have known much about him.

At the moment, only a few second-floor windows were warmed by light. They marked the bedroom suite of Noah Wolflaw, who had made his considerable fortune as the founder and manager of a hedge fund, whatever that might be. I’m reasonably sure that it had something to do with Wall Street and nothing whatsoever to do with boxwood garden hedges.

Now retired at the age of fifty, Mr. Wolflaw claimed to have sustained an injury to the sleep center in his brain. He said that he hadn’t slept a wink in the previous nine years.

I didn’t know whether this extreme insomnia was the truth or a lie, or proof of some delusional condition.

He had bought the residence from the reclusive mining heir. He restored and expanded the house, which was of the Addison Mizner school of architecture, an eclectic mix of Spanish, Moorish, Gothic, Greek, Roman, and Renaissance influences. Broad, balustraded terraces of limestone stepped down to lawns and gardens.

In this hour before dawn, as I crossed the manicured grass toward the main house, the coyotes high in the hills no longer howled, because they had gorged themselves on wild rabbits and slunk away to sleep. After hours of singing, the frogs had exhausted their voices, and the crickets had been devoured by the frogs. A peaceful though temporary hush shrouded this fallen world.

My intention was to relax on a lounge chair on the south terrace until lights appeared in the kitchen. Chef Shilshom always began his workday before dawn.

I had started each of the past two mornings with the chef not solely because he made fabulous breakfast pastries, but also because I suspected that he might let slip some clue to the hidden truth of Roseland. He fended off my curiosity by pretending to be the culinary world’s equivalent of an absentminded professor, but the effort of maintaining that pretense was likely to trip him up sooner or later.

As a guest, I was welcome throughout the ground floor of the house: the kitchen, the dayroom, the library, the billiards room, and elsewhere. Mr. Wolflaw and his live-in staff were intent upon presenting themselves as ordinary people with nothing to hide and Roseland as a charming haven with no secrets.

I knew otherwise because of my special talent, my intuition, and my excellent crap detector — and now also because the previous twilight had for a minute shown me a destination that must be a hundred stops beyond Oz on the Tornado Line Express.

When I say that Roseland was an evil place, that doesn’t mean I assumed everyone there — or even just one of them — was also evil. They were an entertainingly eccentric crew; but eccentricity most often equates with virtue or at least with an absence of profoundly evil intention.

The devil and all his demons are dull and predictable because of their single-minded rebellion against truth. Crime itself — as opposed to the solving of it — is boring to the complex mind, though endlessly fascinating to the simpleminded. One film about Hannibal Lecter is riveting, but a second is inevitably stupefying. We love a series hero, but a series villain quickly becomes silly as he strives so obviously to shock us. Virtue is imaginative, evil repetitive.

They were keeping secrets at Roseland. The reasons for keeping secrets are many, however, and only a fraction are malevolent.

As I settled on the patio lounge chair to wait for Chef Shilshom to switch on the kitchen lights, the night took an intriguing turn. I do not say an unexpected turn, because I’ve learned to expect just about anything.

South from this terrace, a wide arc of stairs rose to a circular fountain flanked by six-foot Italian Renaissance urns. Beyond the fountain, another arc of stairs led to a slope of grass bracketed by hedges that were flanked by gently stepped cascades of water, which were bordered by tall cypresses. Everything led up a hundred yards to another terrace at the top of the hill, on which stood a highly ornamented, windowless limestone mausoleum forty feet on a side.

The mausoleum dated to 1922, a time when the law did not yet forbid burial on residential property. No moldering corpses inhabited this grandiose tomb. Urns filled with ashes were kept in wall niches. Interred there were Constantine Cloyce, his wife, Madra, and their only child, who died young.

Suddenly the mausoleum began to glow, as if the structure were entirely glass, an immense oil lamp throbbing with golden light. The Phoenix palms backdropping the building reflected this radiance, their fronds pluming like the feathery tails of certain fireworks.

A volley of crows exploded out of the palm trees, too startled to shriek, the beaten air cracking off their wings. They burrowed into the dark sky.

Alarmed, I got to my feet, as I always do when a building begins to glow inexplicably.

I didn’t recall ascending the first arc of stairs or circling the fountain, or climbing the second sweep of stairs. As if I’d been briefly spellbound, I found myself on the long slope of grass, halfway to the mausoleum.

I had previously visited that tomb. I knew it to be as solid as a munitions bunker.

Now it looked like a blown-glass aviary in which lived flocks of luminous fairies.

Although no noise accompanied that eerie light, what seemed to be pressure waves broke across me, through me, as if I were having an attack of synesthesia, feeling the sound of silence.

These concussions were the bewitching agent that had spelled me off the lounge chair, up the stairs, onto the grass. They seemed to swirl through me, a pulsing vortex pulling me into a kind of trance. As I discovered that I was on the move once more, walking uphill, I resisted the compulsion to approach the mausoleum — and was able to deny the power that drew me forward. I halted and held my ground.

Yet as the pressure waves washed through me, they flooded me with a yearning for something that I could not name, for some great prize that would be mine if only I went to the mausoleum while the strange light shone through its translucent walls. As I continued to resist, the attracting force diminished and the luminosity began gradually to fade.

Close at my back, a man spoke in a deep voice, with an accent that I could not identify: “I have seen you— ”

Startled, I turned toward him — but no one stood on the grassy slope between me and the burbling fountain.

Behind me, somewhat softer than before, as intimate as if the mouth that formed the words were inches from my left ear, the man continued: “— where you have not yet been.”

Turning again, I saw that I was still alone.

As the glow faded from the mausoleum at the crest of the hill, the voice subsided to a whisper: “I depend on you.”

Each word was softer than the one before it. Silence returned when the golden light retreated into the limestone walls of the tomb.

I have seen you where you have not yet been. I depend on you.

Whoever had spoken was not a ghost. I see the lingering dead, but this man remained invisible. Besides, the dead don’t talk.

Occasionally, the deceased attempt to communicate not merely by nodding and gestures but through the art of mime, which can be frustrating. Like any mentally healthy citizen, I am overcome by the urge to strangle a mime when I happen upon one in full performance, but a mime who’s already dead is unmoved by that threat.

Turning in a full circle, in seeming solitude, I nevertheless said, “Hello?”

The lone voice that answered was a cricket that had escaped the predatory frogs.

Excerpted from Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz. Copyright © 2012 by Dean Koontz. Excerpted by permission of Bantam, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Find out more about what we think you should know about Odd Thomas here.

Read our review of Odd Apocalypse here: Upping the Ante with Odd Thomas in Dean Koontz's Odd Apocalypse

Editor's Note: Victor LaValle is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Big Machine and The Ecstatic, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Here he discusses his inspiration for Lucretia and the Kroons, a fantastical novella about a young girl's journey into a dark netherworld to find her missing best friend.

When my kid sister was eleven, her best friend Dee suffered and died from childhood leukemia. At the end of her life my sister was Dee's only friend. Dee was a sweet girl who lived across the street. By the end she had very little hair and was weak, quite pale. Most of the other kids in the neighborhood treated her badly. They made fun of how she looked, or the fact that she couldn't run around like everyone else. But my sister and Dee just bonded. Dee would come to our house and play with my sister for hours. Sometimes they might sit outside, but only on the sidewalk directly in front of our place. I was ten years older, but I couldn't help but notice their bond. They loved each other as deeply as two friends ever could. I never forgot their closeness.

Recently thoughts of their friendship have returned to me. I'm a new father of a one-year-old and the idea of childhood friendships, of that rare and true bonding that sometimes happens when we're young, has been on my mind. I wanted to write a story that honored the way such friendships can feel epic, almost mythical, when we're children. And I couldn't think of a better way to capture that feeling than to write a story about two young girls, Lucretia and her best friend Sunny. Sunny is very sick and Lucretia will do anything to save her. Trying to do that takes these two girls to a place beyond anything they could imagine. But they'll risk it for one another. This story is partly an homage to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and a kind of prequel to my upcoming novel, The Devil in Silver, but really it's a tribute to the commitment and grace of two best friends.

We've all seen the movie. We remember the music, the characters, the fake-looking (but still terrifying) shark. We remember lines like "You're gonna need a bigger boat" and "Smile, you son of a …" Yes, Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster is certainly memorable; so memorable, in fact, we've often forgotten (or, in some cases, never knew) that what came first and inspired the movie was Peter Benchley's novel of the same name -- Jaws.

The book's plot is familiar: One night, a young woman goes for a swim and never returns, killed by a shark. Police find her remains washed up, tangled in seaweed. Chief of police, Martin Brody, tries to close the beaches, but the mayor refuses. As he reminds Brody, the town of Amity's livelihood depends on summer vacationers; with the Fourth of July right around the corner, closing the beaches would mean "cutting [their] own throats." But then the shark kills again, and again, until even the mayor can no longer ignore the problem. Chief Brody hires a local fisherman to catch the shark, an ichthyologist named Matt Hooper who comes to provide his expert opinion -- and a patrol is carried out. But all these efforts fail to stop the shark, and Brody must turn to their last savior: a rough, Ahab-type fisherman named Quint. For the right price, and a deckhand or two, he's willing to kill the shark. And so, with Amity's future in the balance, together Quint, Hooper, and Brody set out on the epic hunt.

Some aspects are entirely unique to the novel. The characters are fleshed out, given detailed histories and new motivations. This is most obvious with Ellen Brody and Matt Hooper (an old flame's little brother) who, in an attempt to recapture their shared pasts, have an affair.

Admittedly, big fans of the movie will find this difficult to swallow. The characters aren't those they've come to know and adore. Brody isn't so noble, Hooper isn't so charming, Ellen isn't so loyal. It can be said, however, that these characters, at least in some flawed way, are more honest than their movie counterparts, more multidimensional. If you can get past these differences, though, and accept the novel as unique to itself, its own appealing identity inevitably becomes clear. Jaws is a taut novel that scares and thrills, delivering both insightful exposition and effective action -- a hidden treasure worth rediscovering.

Glen Duncan once again delivers a delectably good read in Talulla Rising, the sequel to his best-selling novel The Last Werewolf. For those who have not read The Last Werewolf, Duncan does a crafty job of bringing us up to speed at the beginning, so do not fret, dear reader; you will not be lost. Once you're all caught up, buckle up -- the action does not brake for anyone.

Jake Marlow, who had been the last living werewolf, is dead. Talulla was Jake's lover and were-companion, but their love affair was cut short, seemingly by the irony and dark humor of the universe: Jake, who had spent years waiting to die, chasing for it even, suddenly found that when death came looking for him, he wanted nothing more than to live.

Talulla Demetriou, now last living werewolf, and pregnant by Jake, has been chased into seclusion by the WOCOP (World Organization for the Control of Occult Phenomena), the same organization responsible for killing Jake Marlow. A group of religious fanatics has taken over the WOCOP -- along with a power-crazed vampire named Jacqueline. Talulla must deal with her new reality, while mourning the death of her lover and coming to terms with her new nature (turning into a furry beast every full moon, and eating humans to survive) -- all with understandable ambivalence.

Meanwhile, Jacqueline wants to steal Talulla's child for two reasons: 1) werewolf blood is said to give vampires the ability to walk in daylight, and 2) she and her followers believe in an old vampire lore that predicts the return of Remshi, a deity who is supposed to induct vampires back into power. No sooner does Talulla give birth to her were-child, though, than the WOCOP takes her child away. Time is of the essence in getting back the kidnapped were-child, and the tale that unfolds is a lavishly elegant, werewolf versus vampire, paranormal thriller.

One of my favorite things to do after finishing a book is to get someone else's take on it. I spoke to a friend who confessed that this genre is not her favorite, but we came to a consensus on two points: Duncan's writing is highly entertaining and imaginative -- and Talulla, despite her otherworldly nature, is the most human heroine to come along in a while.

For his latest solo outing, Lincoln Child (author of Terminal Freeze, Deep Storm, and the Pendergast series with frequent co-writer Douglas Preston) shifts the tomb-raiders-battle-ancient-evil story from the clichés of the genre by moving the setting away from the usual sand-swept plains of Egypt. Instead, The Third Gate places protagonist Jeremy Logan -- an internationally renowned "enigmalogist" -- in "the Sudd," a mucky swamp south of the Egyptian border.

One character describes the Sudd as "a region thousands of square miles across, not so much swamp as an impenetrable labyrinth of papyrus reeds and waterlogged trunks. And mud. Mud everywhere, mud more treacherous than quicksand. The Sudd isn't deep, often just thirty or forty feet in places, but in addition to being horribly honeycombed with braided undergrowth, its water is so full of silt, divers can't see an inch beyond their face. The water's full of crocodiles by day, the air full of mosquitoes by night. All the early explorers gave up trying to cross it and eventually went around."

So, not exactly a top-ten travel destination, even for those on a budget. It's there, under the mucky nightmare, that a team of fortune hunters hopes to uncover the true resting place of Narmer, the first pharaoh of unified Egypt.

Countless horror movies have told us that messing with final resting places usually leads to badness -- ectoplasm in your hair, bleeding walls, that kind of thing. And if this weren't the case with the hunt for Narmer, well, Jeremy Logan's presence wouldn't be necessary. But, of course, enough does go wrong to require the special skills of an enigmalogist.

So why should The Third Gate make your summer reading list? Easy -- the shiver-inducing story is guaranteed to help you cut down on your air-conditioning costs.

Hi there. Have you found yourself unexpectedly dead? Do you have some lingering anger or unfinished business that you just can't let go of which is keeping you from moving on? Just so you know, there's a guy who can help. They call him Odd Thomas; he lives out there in Pico Mundo, California. You can usually find him working over in the diner, back behind the grill. He has a reputation for helping out the recently dead. He can see things that others can't. Just to warn you though, he's young — only twenty years old — and honestly looks like he should be hanging out at the beach rather than helping out ghosts, but he has other things up his sleeve and is definitely more than he seems.

If you don't believe me, there are a couple of celebrity endorsements you can look into. Elvis Presley, for one, has been hanging around for years trying to get Odd to understand. Oh, right, one big rule. You're not allowed to talk to Odd. I don't know why, you just can't, so do the best you can with those pantomime skills you've developed over the years. Anyway, good luck.

Oh, wait. Before you go, there are a few other things you should probably know:

1. Odd has issues. What twenty-year-old doesn't, right? Just saying, he's dealing with some stuff so it may be difficult to keep him focused. Do the best that you can.
2. If you're really desperate and really need to get him to pay attention, you can pull out all the stops and become a poltergeist. If you end up with enough pent-up anger, this will give you the ability to start throwing things around. It's very effective, but only use it as a last measure. It's very dangerous and you could end up hurting someone.
3. Very important. There are bad things out there. He calls them Bodachs. They basically look like moving piles of smoke. If you see these guys, run. If you see a lot of them, run really fast. They are attracted to evil and if they're hanging around, you know something awful is about to happen.
4. Fortunately, if you need more information, Dean Koontz has written a number of books about Odd's experiences. You can start with the first book, Odd Thomas. If you feel the need to keep going, you can read Forever Odd, Brother Odd, and Odd Hours. There's also the Odd Thomas Series of all four books if you want to get through them all at once.

As I said, good luck! See you on the other side!

Mayan prophecies, the decline in the honeybee population, rising temperatures at the Earth's Core, melting icecaps. These are just a few of the things that can keep me awake in the middle of the night. And now, thanks to Stephen King's The Stand, I can add the cold and flu season to the list.

"Don't do it," my husband said to me when I picked up The Stand in December.
"What? Why not?"
"You shouldn't read it. It's not for you," he replied.
"I won’t like it?"
"That's not what I said. It's brilliant. You'll love it. I need my sleep."
Having been married for thirteen years, he knows that he too will suffer when I am plagued by irrational fears at 2 a.m. (Don't ever ask him what happened after we saw "The Sixth Sense"!)

But having been a longtime King fan, I thought this omission in my reading history needed to be rectified, immediately. So I dove in.

Fast forward a few weeks. I'm on Metro North, heading to work, a trip I make at least five times a week. Achooo! Sniffle, sniffle. Cough! I broke out in a cold sweat. It was possible. A super-flu could break out. And it would be impossible to contain. No one would be able to protect themselves.

If you are not familiar with this 1,100-page magnum opus, The Stand is the story of a group of people trying to make their way in the world after almost the entire population is wiped out by a Super Flu referred to as Captain Trips. Of course, it's not that simple. There are a number of survivors ill-equipped to deal with the stress and devastation; there are haunting dreams and paralyzing fears, both internal and external, imagined and real; and a quest to find Mother Abigail, a woman older than time itself, who may be able to answer all their questions.

There are amazing characters, ones that I found myself thinking I would want to be with if ever in such a situation (cue 2 a.m.): Frannie, pregnant and worried that her baby will not survive; Larry Underwood, a struggling musician on the cusp of breaking out when it all goes to hell; Nick Andros, deaf and mute but a true leader nonetheless. But as with all King novels, not everything is lollipops and rainbows. The Dark Man who appears in so many of his works is a key player known as Randall Flagg; he rallies every remaining person of questionable morals and motives to his side, and until the last page you are left wondering who is going to win.

My husband was right (damn it!). The Stand does keep me up at night. But I don’t regret reading it. How can one ever regret reading something that is pure genius? The Stand is King at his best, taking normal everyday traumas, situations, and concerns and ratcheting them up just that much more. Think Bullying (“Carrie”), rabid dogs (“Cujo”), alcoholics fighting internal demons (“The Shining”).

It is rumored that King almost abandoned this book due to writer's block. I for one, am so thankful he did not. And I am sure you will be too.

Do you know the feeling of losing yourself completely in a book? There is that one moment when everything around you suddenly vanishes. Within one moment you’re not on a crowded, sticky bus anymore. Noises and smells around you disappear, as you become part of the story that unfolds before you. From this point on, you see with the protagonist’s eyes, you hear what he hears, and you smell what he smells. Letters shape landscapes, words become images, and stories turn into experiences. Stephen King and Peter Straub create this intense sensation with his novel The Talisman.

When I look back at all the King books I’ve read -- and believe me, I’ve read many -- there is one moment, one scene, if you will, that most strongly stands out in my memory. It is a moment from The Talisman: Jack Sawyer, a thirteen-year-old boy -- his father is gone, his mother is dying -- stands on the shore of the gray Atlantic near a silent amusement park. He drinks from a mysterious flask – and wakes in an idyllic medieval world full of lush fields, strange apparatuses, and a bright blue sky. This world is called the Territories and it “holds magic like we have physics.”

Jack learns that his ability to flip between worlds is unique and that only a few others were able to do this. Among those few, he is told, was his father. Furthermore, all that happens in the Territories seems to have effects on our world – some are good, some are horribly bad. Most important, each being has its counterpart in the Territories, including Jack’s mother. In the Territories she is a queen, loved for her generosity and kindness. But meanwhile, in our world, she has become sick and evil minds have taken control of the land.

Jack’s life is about to change as he is chosen to make a journey that will take him on a search for the talisman -- an artifact that can heal the queen, free the Territories, and save his mother from her imminent death. His journey takes him across the United States and into a magical realm where he finds new friends and battles familiar foes to bring back the good in the world. His motivation is the strongest of them all: the fear of losing a loved one.

For this story, Stephen King teamed up with Bram Stoker Award-winner Peter Straub, making this not only an epic fantasy and coming-of-age adventure but also a vivid example of how perfectly two noticeably distinct voices can blend into one. So perfectly, in fact, that Straub’s colorful descriptions add to King’s astonishing characterization to create a world that a reader easily slips into. The eerie question is, however, will the reader ever return?

So, are you Team Bloodsucker or Team Wolf? Because it seems like you've gotta pick one these days, thanks to pop culture franchises like "True Blood," "Twilight," and "The Vampire Diaries" irrevocably linking the fates of vampires and werewolves. Which is why it may come as a bit of a surprise to learn that Anne Rice – the vampire queen of Gothic horror - has not, in fact, penned a werewolf book. Until now, that is. The Wolf Gift opens with Rice's quintessentially lush descriptive imagery that is, oh, how to phrase this? Real-estate porn. To wit:

"He looked up at the old dark wood paneling above the fireplace, rectangles neatly trimmed in deeply carved egg-and-dart molding, and at the similar paneling that covered the walls. There were bookcases flanking the fireplace, stuffed with old volumes, leather, cloth, even paperbacks, and far to the right over his shoulder he glimpsed an east facing room that looked like a vintage paneled library, the kind he'd always dreamed of having for himself. There was a fire in there too."

The "he" at the center of this story is Reuben, a twenty-three-year-old cub reporter who's been tasked with writing a story about a grand mansion near the coast of Northern California. He quickly falls under the spell -- and into the bed -- of the house's owner, a beautiful older woman named Marchent. Even more quickly, tragedy strikes: Marchent is dead, the victim of a violent break-in that Reuben survives thanks only to the unexpected intervention of a powerful animal that sinks its teeth into him after dispatching of the attackers.

If you're familiar with any version of the werewolf mythos, you can probably guess where this is going, but to Rice's immense credit, the tale she spins is one that feels fresh, an accomplishment in a crowded genre. Reuben is a likable hero who doesn't become overly mired in the "Am I man or beast?" teeth-gnashing that can plague too many protagonists in paranormal stories.

The Wolf Gift is more than a new novel by Anne Rice - it's a homecoming. It has everything -- compelling characters, steamy love scenes, and brainy monsters -- that made her an icon. Fans who have been dying to see her get back to her monster-infested roots will be more than sated with this Gift, and if you're a Rice neophyte who's been waiting for the perfect time to jump into her world, well, no time like the present.

"Phnglui mglw nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah nagl fhtagn"

These strange words are chanted to capture the attention of the mighty Cthulhu, arguably the scariest and most malevolent of the beasts created by H.P. Lovecraft. Like the stories of another timeless horror writer, Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft’s ideas are omnipresent in today’s genre literature. Far ahead of his time, Lovecraft (1890-1937) is one of the most influential of all horror and science fiction authors. His introductory short story collection, Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre: The Best of H.P. Lovecraft, features sixteen classic tales you shouldn't dare to pass up.

This volume includes "The Color Out of Space," the critically acclaimed “The Shadow out of Time,” and, perhaps most important, "The Call of Cthulhu." While all three are fatalistic in their focus on an ancient and powerful creature that threatens the very existence of mankind, “The Call of Cthulhu” is the quintessence of Lovecraft’s oeuvre. Furthermore, it is such a popular tale that it established the so-called Cthulhu Mythos, a fictitious cult that has been quoted and further developed by countless authors, directors, and artists.

In the story, a dying professor leaves his great-nephew Francis Thurston a collection of documents that contain studies of a strange cult surrounding a weird monster. People believe it has the appearance of an “octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature” with a “pulpy, tentacled head [that] surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings.” After a frenetic sequence of fitting together the dreadful bits and pieces of information, Thurston investigates the Cthulhu cult by himself. As he finds out the inevitable truth, he collapses in sheer terror.

A couple of months ago, I met up with friends for a movie night during which we watched some overlooked horror classics, including John Carpenter’s brilliant "The Thing." It was not until then that I realized that the story of a group of scientists who inadvertently woke a hostile alien life form in Antarctica was first and foremost an homage to Lovecraft.

So, what accounts for the ongoing fascination with Lovecraft’s tales? How is it possible that his stories, although almost a century old, are still as gripping as any modern horror movie with high-tech sound and special effects? To say it with H.P. Lovecraft’s own words, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. These facts few psychologists will dispute, and their admitted truth must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tales as a literary form.”

This short story collection is an essential and comprehensive overview of Lovecraft’s tales. In fact, Stephen King believes he is “yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." Tales that still send shivers down our spines.

Welcome to 77 Shadow Street. Where nightmares become real.

Every year I look forward to a new novel from Dean Koontz, and each time I sit down and begin reading, I find myself unable to do anything else until I have read the very last page. Simply put, Koontz is a master storyteller. He has a way of drawing you into a world you never could have imagined -- creating chilling stories with terror at every turn. Suffice it to say, he has done it again.

Moving shadows, plunging elevators, phantom voices -- welcome to 77 Shadow Street, the address of the Pendleton, a palace built in the late 1800s. From the beginning, there have been incidents of evil and madness. Since the 1970s, the newly renovated apartment building has been at peace. Until now …

77 Shadow Street is the perfect story for a cold winter’s night, and you can start reading an excerpt right now.

Dean had the idea to create a virtual Pendleton, so that you can explore the terror that lies behind the apartment doors for yourself. Head on over to 77ShadowStreet.com, where YOU are part of the terror. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

And enjoy 77 Shadow Street. I hope your doors are locked…

Justin Cronin broke my heart and then built it back up page by page. Don’t let The Passage fool you. It is not your typical end-of-society story, where we are being ravaged by vampires, zombies, fill-in-the-blank creatures. A government experiment gone awry (isn’t it always a government experiment?) leaves the reader in a world devastated and destroyed by vampire-like creatures referred to simply as Walkers. But what sets this book apart from others in this genre is the depth of feeling Cronin brings to the characters and the dialogue. It is easy to see why he is an award-winning author: He is a remarkably gifted storyteller with an eye for detail and beauty, even in the darkest settings.

Centered around two very pivotal events, 100 years apart, Cronin brilliantly paints a modern world crumbling around us and being reformed years later:

Meet The Twelve, death-row inmates who were experimented on and who unleashed an incomprehensible and unbiased attack on society, striking down anyone in their path.

Meet Amy, a young girl abandoned by her mother with a small task ahead of her: to save the world.

Meet FBI Agent Brad Wolgast, who forsakes everything he is and has to save her.

Meet Peter, who is waiting on the Night Watch to kill his brother.

Meet Sara and Alicia and so many others, each with their own stories and dreams, all struggling to survive and make sense of the world they live in, the new world, the World of the Walkers.

If that isn’t enough to intrigue you, Stephen King called in to "Good Morning America" when Justin Cronin appeared in June of 2009 to say: “You put the scare back in vampires,” and "I really love your book. It's terrific and I hope it sells a million copies." As Cronin's eyes got wider and wider, King continued, "It's got everything in it, wonderful characters, and it's just a terrific read from beginning to end.” But if you need more convincing, how about this -- Ridley Scott is working on the film.

For whichever reason you pick up this book, you’ll be glad you did. If you find yourself asking the question that many have -- “Where will I be when the lights go out?” -- please know that you have been warned: Wherever you are, believe me, you will be praying for them to come back on.

To quote Robert Frost:

“Some say the world will end in Fire, Some say in Ice; From what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor …”

WALKERS.

The Twelve, the next book in the trilogy, is planned for release in 2012.

Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Zone One, bats cleanup after Shaun of the Dead in the ironic zombie literature line-up. Where Shaun wanted to show how delightful it is to have fun with this curiously unavoidable genre, Zone One endeavors to explore the materialistic aspect of humans losing their humanity by highlighting the necessity of the zombie plot. Wandering through an empty city in Zone One, Whitehead forces us to stop and look at every little organic bath product and focus-grouped chain restaurant in confessional detail as Mark Spitz, the zombie-hunting protagonist, unpacks the memories around each. Although his wry dismissal of each unnecessary object and meaningless bauble can test your parallel processing powers at some points as it pulls you deeper into static lunarscapes, it's necessary that we see it all in order to take in the magnitude, be it very large or very small, of what can be lost in the collapse of civilization.

Crisp action scenes appear on occasion, 2-D projections arresting in their simple, well-wrought terror. After all, the only thing worse than a truck full of soulless IKEA furniture is a truck full of zombies. Whitehead keeps the suspense wound around the cultural criticism, and the terrifying payoffs succeed in pulling us through the existential dread to the much more visceral and expansive final terror.

Whitehead also pulls off a neat trick by telling the story in the third person, but then sticking very close to his protagonist's thoughts on the sad vapidity of our pre-undead lives, in order to make sure we don't dismiss Spitz's cynicism as a simple heroic outlier. Spitz isn’t special in his hatred of our material affectations; it’s clear that we would all view our former excess as majorly repulsive in a time of true need. Whatever we don't set aside to survive will be set aside for us: The end is nigh, say Starbucks social media campaigns. Colson Whitehead believes that the end is a dark demolition rooted not in the nature of the plague but our blindness to it. Shaun of the Dead supposed that the zombie narrative was far sillier than we previously allowed; Zone One makes it all too serious.