The Taking - A Novel

Zusatztext "Koontz remains one of the most fascinating of contemporary popular novelists ... he is a novelist of metaphysics and moral reflection."— Publishers Weekly "A thrill ride."— Daily News (NY) Informationen zum Autor Dean Koontz Klappentext #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER On the morning that marks the end of the world they have known, Molly and Neil Sloan awaken to the drumbeat of rain on their roof. A luminous silvery downpour is drenching their small California mountain town. It has haunted their sleep, invaded their dreams, and now, in the moody purple dawn, the young couple cannot shake the sense of something terribly wrong. As the hours pass, Molly and Neil listen to disturbing news of extreme weather phenomena across the globe. By nightfall, their little town loses all contact with the outside world. A thick fog transforms the once-friendly village into a ghostly labyrinth. And soon the Sloans and their neighbors will be forced to draw on reserves of courage and humanity they never knew they had. For within the misty gloom they will encounter something that reveals in a shattering instant what is happening to their world-something that is hunting them with ruthless efficiency. Chapter One A few minutes past one o'clock in the morning, a hard rain fell without warning. No thunder preceded the deluge, no wind. The abruptness and the ferocity of the downpour had the urgent quality of a perilous storm in a dream. Lying in bed beside her husband, Molly Sloan had been restless before the sudden cloudburst. She grew increasingly fidgety as she listened to the rush of rain. The voices of the tempest were legion, like an angry crowd chanting in a lost language. Torrents pounded and pried at the cedar siding, at the shingles, as if seeking entrance. September in southern California had always before been a dry month in a long season of predictable drought. Rain rarely fell after March, seldom before December. In wet months, the rataplan of raindrops on the roof had sometimes served as a reliable remedy for insomnia. This night, however, the liquid rhythms failed to lull her into slumber, and not just because they were out of season. For Molly, sleeplessness had too often in recent years been the price of thwarted ambition. Scorned by the sandman, she stared at the dark bedroom ceiling, brooding about what might have been, yearning for what might never be. By the age of twenty-eight, she had published four novels. All were well received by reviewers, but none sold in sufficient numbers to make her famous or even to guarantee that she would find an eager publisher for the next. Her mother, Thalia, a writer of luminous prose, had been in the early years of an acclaimed career when she died of cancer at thirty. Now, sixteen years later, Thalia's books were out of print, her mark upon the world all but erased. Molly lived with a quiet dread of following her mother into obscurity. She didn't suffer from an inordinate fear of death; rather, she was troubled by the thought of dying before achieving any lasting accomplishment. Beside her, Neil snored softly, oblivious of the storm. Sleep always found him within a minute of the moment when he put his head on the pillow and closed his eyes. He seldom stirred during the night; after eight hours, he woke in the same position in which he had gone to sleep--rested, invigorated. Neil claimed that only the innocent enjoyed such perfect sleep. Molly called it the sleep of the slacker. Throughout their seven years of marriage, they had conducted their lives by different clocks. She dwelled as much in the future as in the present, envisioning where she wished to go, relentlessly mapping the path that ought to lead to her high goals. Her strong mainspring was wound tight. Neil lived in the mome...

Product details

• Authors: Dean Koontz, Dean R. Koontz
• Publisher: Bantam Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.08.2010
• EAN: 9780553593501
• ISBN: 978-0-553-59350-1
• No. of pages: 432
• Dimensions: 105 mm x 191 mm x 25 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense