Some 25 years ago, in what I call my “dark period,” I was deeply into horror fiction. Of course Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and others lined my shelves, but it was a British author, Ramsey Campbell that truly inspired night chills. Incarnate, his 1983 masterpiece went a long way in defining the genre, and for me, had me sleeping with the light on for a long time.

Ramsey Campbell is considered by most everyone in the horror arena to be one of the best horror writers around. He’s respected and admired by readers and fellow writers alike, with each of his new books eagerly anticipated. Peter Straub considers him to be ‘one of the few real writers in our field. In some ways. . . the best of us all.’ Clive Barker‘s opinion is that ‘Ramsey Campbell writes prose as incisive and elegant as anything the mainstream can offer.,’ His press isn’t bad either, one paper proclaiming him to be ‘generally considered the nearest thing to God’ in horror fiction. (more…)

VJ Books is now shipping signed 1st editions of What the Night Knows by Dean Koontz.

In the late summer of a long ago year, a killer arrived in a small city. His name was Alton Turner Blackwood, and in the space of a few months he brutally murdered four families. His savage spree ended only when he himself was killed by the last survivor of the last family, a fourteen-year-old boy.

Half a continent away and two decades later, someone is murdering families again, recreating in detail Blackwood’s crimes. Homicide detective John Calvino is certain that his own family—his wife and three children—will be targets in the fourth crime, just as his parents and sisters were victims on that distant night when he was fourteen and killed their slayer.

As a detective, John is a man of reason who deals in cold facts. But an extraordinary experience convinces him that sometimes death is not a one-way journey, that sometimes the dead return.

Here is ghost story like no other you have read. In the Calvinos, Dean Koontz brings to life a family that might be your own, in a war for their survival against an adversary more malevolent than any he has yet created, with their own home the battleground. Of all his acclaimed novels, none exceeds What the Night Knows in power, in chilling suspense, and in sheer mesmerizing storytelling.

See all titles by Dean Koontz.

VJ Books has received:  Justin Cronin – The Passage,  Nelson Demille – The Lion,  Alexandra Sokoloff – Book of Shadows,  Dean Koontz – Frankenstein: Lost Souls,  James Patterson – Private,  Jon Land – Strong Justice, R. J. Ellory – The Anniversary Man,  Karin Slaughter – Broken,  Jonathan Santlofer (editor) – The Dark End of the Street (Limited edition), and Clive Cussler & Justin Scott – The Spy, The Spy (Limited Lettered edition), and The Spy (Limited Numbered edition).

VJ Books has received:  Robert B. Parker – Split Image (unsigned),  Dan Simmons – Black Hills,  Hugh Ambrose – The Pacific,  Connie Willis – Blackout,  Noah Boyd – The Bricklayer,  Dean Koontz – Breathless (UK),  James Twining – The Geneva Deception (UK), and James Twining – The Gilded Seal (UK Trade).

VJ Books has received:  Robert K. Tanenbaum – Capture,  Dean Koontz – Breathless,  Wally Lamb – Wishin’ and Hopin’,  Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen – To Try Men’s Souls,  T. Jefferson Parker – Iron River,  and Orson Scott Card – Hidden Empire.

Dean Koontz has had ten hard covers and fourteen paperbacks reaching the number one slot on the New York Times bestseller list. Koontz’s newest novel, Breathless, delivers a thrilling novel of suspense and adventure: the story of a world where good itself is an endangered species and one man will risk his life—and more—to save it from extinction.

VJ Books’ co-founder, John Hutchinson has been a Koontz fan for over 30 years, “The first book I offer any new reader from my personal library is Lightning. It remains my favorite Dean Koontz book. VJ Books is very excited about the release of Breathless and are confident that it will compare to other Koontz classics.”

It is largely due to Mr. Hutchinson’s love of Koontz books that VJ Books offers signed copies. “He does not travel much to promote his books and is very selective about where he signs”, offers Hutchinson.

Breathless introduces two new characters to the Koontz pantheon, Grady Adams and Camellia “Cammy” Rivers.  Grady spots a pair of stunningly beautiful furred animals unlike anything he’s ever seen. They flee the instant they detect his presence, but the mystery of that brief encounter remains. In the days ahead, Grady will approach the creatures again, gaining their trust but coming no closer to solving their mystery. For this he enlists the help of an old friend, veterinarian Camellia “Cammy” Rivers, who, in turn, is stunned—and enchanted—by Grady’s new “pets.” Soon Homeland Security will place Grady’s home and hundreds of square miles of surrounding wilderness under quarantine. And Grady, Cammy, and the two creatures they’ve come to feel they must protect at all costs find themselves virtual prisoners—and the unwilling focus of an army of biologists, naturalists, and research scientists.

You can order a signed edition ($49.99) of Breathless at www.vjbooks.com

See signed and collectible books by Dean Koontz, and his biography and bibliography here

About VJ Books:  VJ Books started in 1998 and soon learned that their customer was foremost a collector.  Their customers sought collector grade first edition books, preferably autographed by the author.  In an effort to respond to this demand, VJ Books has developed relationships with publishers, authors and agents to provide a continuous supply of new titles for their customers. Each month VJ Books’ customers are able to choose from dozens of author signed books from some of the most exciting, highly acclaimed authors in the areas of mystery, suspense, sci-fi and modern literature. Additionally, they continue to offer an impressive selection of backlist, rare, out-of-print, and special edition titles for your consideration.

Another review by Nikki C of Texas!

What stood out the most to me in this book was the unimaginable suffering and survivor’s guilt suffered by Joe Carpenter as he tries to find reasons behind the terrible fate of his family. He not only struggles internally with all of the “what-if’s” and the “why’s”, but the inexplicable events that follow a brief visit from a complete stranger, who claims to have walked away from an unsurvivable plane crash. Desperate to find the truth, and clinging to all but nonexistent hope that his loved ones may have survived, Joe seeks out answers that could cost him his very own life. With each page of this book, the suspense is amplified because of the anguish of its characters and their need to find solace in the aftermath of tragedy.

VJ Books has an extensive backlist of signed and collectible Dean Koontz titles.  See it here.

Megaseller Koontz, no stranger to radio interviews, gives a major shout-out to the interviewers themselves in his latest opus, whose protagonist is an author: “Radio hosts, both talk-jocks and traditional tune-spinners, do better interviews than TV types.  Rare is the TV interviewer who has  read your book, but eight of ten radio hosts will have read it.”  Relentless copies in print:  a cool 550,000.

(Publisher’s Weekly, June 22)

Order your signed copy of Relentless by Dean Koontz at www.vjbooks.com

Odd Hours, Koontz’s fourth book about this, well, odd character, has more than one million copies in print.  Koontz said in an interview that this unusual protagonist came to him “as a gift, the entire first chapter of his first book having poured out of me as I was in the middle of writing “The Face.”  And though he originally conceived of the series as open-ended, he now believes the seventh book will be the conclusion.

See all titles by Dean Koontz at www.vjbooks.com

(Publisher’s Weekly, May 11)

(Publisher’s Weekly, Mar. 23, by Dermot McEvoy and Michael Coffey )

Familiar voices crowd the top in fiction; in nonfiction, the fundamental rules apply—plus all things Obama

John Grisham‘s aptly titled Appeal had the most of it, as far as the novel-buying reading public went, earning the #1 slot on our hardcover fiction list last year—just enough to beat out the beloved Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, which sold 1.3 million. Our top 15 fiction titles this year look much like last year’s, with the notable absence of Khaled Hosseini, who was top dog in ’07. The prolific James Patterson racked up three in the top echelon, and Nicholas Sparks, Patricia Cornwell, Dean Koontz and David Baldacci made returns. The new kids on the block, in addition to Wroblewski, were Stephenie Meyer, seamlessly crossing over from the YA genre with The Host, and Glenn Beck, whose Christmas Sweater apparently warmed the hearts of his faithful. (more…)