A supernatural thriller from 'America's most popular suspense novelist' (Rolling Stone): his most chilling, gripping and original novel to date. Home for ten-year-old Fric Manheim is a vast Bel Air mansion. Somebody has to live there. His father, who owns it, is Hollywood's biggest star -- The Face -- but he's hardly ever in Hollywood. Fric's mother went her own way long ago, though she still has her own suite in the house, and a phone line -- it gets as few calls as line no.24, which is for receiving phone calls from the dead. Fric is pretty well home alone most of the time, with just the housekeeper Mrs McBee and the security chief Ethan Truman, Ex-LAPD. Fric would like to tell them about the pervert who rings him but he doesn't. He would like to tell his father, but when your father is The Face there is no chance of a private phone call. Anyway, he doesn't really believe that Moloch is coming to get him like the caller says. But he does carefully prepare a hiding place ...Ethan meanwhile is worried on account of the six black boxes addressed to The Face that have been delivered to the mansion, each containing cryptic, maybe sinister objects, snails, the scrabble letters WOE, an apple with a doll's eye in its core. Is the weirdo that sent them threatening The Face? Then phone line 24 starts ringing and its voicemail is activated. Only The Face and his spiritual adviser Ming du Lac have a key to the all-white room where the phone is. Ethan doesn't -- and though he will track down the source of the black boxes, he won't understand what they mean without the help of the caller to line no. 24. By the time he realizes this the worst will already have happened ...

Author Biography

Dean Koontz was born and raised in Pennsylvania. He is the author of seven New York Times no.1 bestsellers. He lives with his wife Gerda and their dog Trixie in Southern California.