After Death

by Dean Koontz

Overview

A modern-day Lazarus is humanity’s last hope in a breathtaking novel about the absolute powers of good and evil by Dean Koontz, the #1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense.

Michael Mace, head of security at a top-secret research facility, opens his eyes in a makeshift morgue twenty-four hours following an event in which everyone perished—including him and his best friend, Shelby Shrewsberry.

Having awakened with an extraordinary ability unlike anything he—or anyone else—has ever imagined, Michael is capable of being as elusive as a ghost. He sets out to honor his late friend by helping Nina Dozier and her son, John, whom Shelby greatly admired. Although what Michael does for Nina is life changing, his actions also evoke the wrath of John’s father, a member of one of the most violent street gangs in Los Angeles.

But an even greater threat is descending: the Internal Security Agency’s most vicious assassin, Durand Calaphas. Calaphas will stop at nothing to get his man. If Michael dies twice, he will not live a third time.

From the tarnished glamour of Beverly Hills to the streets of South Central to a walled estate in Rancho Santa Fe, only Michael can protect Nina and John—and ensure that light survives in a rapidly darkening world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781662513060
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	01/23/2024
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	15,446
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

International bestselling author Dean Koontz was only a senior in college when he won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition. He has never stopped writing since. Koontz is the author of The House at the End of the World, The Big Dark Sky, Quicksilver, The Other Emily, Elsewhere, Devoted, and seventy-nine New York Times bestsellers, fourteen of which were #1, including One Door Away from Heaven, From the Corner of His Eye, Midnight, Cold Fire, The Bad Place, Hideaway, Dragon Tears, Intensity, Sole Survivor, The Husband, Odd Hours, Relentless, What the Night Knows, and 77 Shadow Street. He’s been hailed by Rolling Stone as “America’s most popular suspense novelist,” and his books have been published in thirty-eight languages and have sold over five hundred million copies worldwide. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, he now lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Elsa, and the enduring spirits of their goldens Trixie and Anna. For more information, visit his website at www.deankoontz.com.

Hometown:

Newport Beach, California

Date of Birth:

July 9, 1945

Place of Birth:

Everett, Pennsylvania

Education:

B.S. (major in English), Shippensburg University, 1966

Website:

http://www.deankoontz.com

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Dean Koontz

“Koontz's latest thriller is superbly narrated by Edoardo Ballerini.… Narrating largely from Mace's point of view, Ballerini portrays him as an unflappable, stoic loner who helps a single mother and her son escape the grasp of the boy's father, a vicious L.A. gangbanger…. Ballerini's performance of the cat-and-mouse game between Mace and Calaphas is riveting.” —AudioFile Magazine, Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award

#1 New York Times Bestseller

“A master of the suspense thriller genre, After Death is still another brilliant, original, memorable, and entertaining novel [from] master storyteller Dean Koontz. Deftly narrated by voice actor Edoardo Ballierini, …[this] will have a special appeal for fans of conspiracy thrillers and science fiction adventures.” —Midwest Book Review

“America’s most popular suspense novelist.” —Rolling Stone

“Koontz has always had near-Dickensian powers of description and an ability to yank us from one page to the next that few novelists can match.” —Los Angeles Times

“Tumbling, hallucinogenic prose.” —New York Times Book Review

“Dean Koontz is not just a master of our darkest dreams but also a literary juggler.” —The Times (London)

“Dean Koontz writes page-turners, middle-of-the-night-sneak-up-behind-you suspense thrillers. He touches our hearts and tingles our spines.” —Washington Post Book World

“Koontz has a knack for making the bizarre and uncanny seem as commonplace as a sunrise. Bottom line: the Dean of Suspense.” —People magazine

“Positively twitching with suspense. Another sure-fire hit from a thriller master.” —Booklist (starred review)

“If Stephen King is the Rolling Stones of novels, Koontz is the Beatles.” —Playboy

“A superb plotter and wordsmith. He chronicles the hopes and fears of our time in broad strokes and fine detail, using popular fiction to explore the human condition [and] demonstrating that the real horror of life is found not in monsters but within the human psyche.” —USA Today

“Far more than a genre writer. Characters and the search for meaning, exquisitely crafted, are the soul of his work. This is why his novels will be read long after the ghosts and monsters of most genre writers have been consigned to the attic. One of the master storytellers of this or any age.” —Tampa Tribune

“Dean Koontz almost occupies a genre of his own. He is a master at building suspense and holding the reader spellbound.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Demanding much of itself, Koontz’s style bleaches out clichés while showing a genius for details. He leaves his competitors buried in the dust.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Another A-plus thriller from a writer on a serious winning streak.” —Booklist (starred review)

From the Publisher

2023-05-09
A self-described research wizard turns out to be a wizard in more ways than one.

To hear Michael Mace tell it, he’s just “a guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time when, in the midst of catastrophe, one thing went right.” The catastrophe was a government-sponsored microbial infection that swept through the headquarters of the Beautification Research Project, killing 55 people—no, make that 54, since Michael, the BRP security chief, somehow came back to life. And that’s not all, for now Michael’s acquired the power to tap into all sorts of chip-driven objects, from cellphones to supercomputers. He can read their data instantly and alter their records from far away. In short, he’s the perfect savior for accountant Nina Dozier. Michael’s best friend, genius immunologist Shelby Shrewsberry, had hired Nina away from her old job so she could work on BRP’s books, but before he could confess his love for her, he was killed in the outbreak. Now Nina’s menaced by Aleem Sutter, the gangbanger who abandoned her years ago after getting her pregnant but now wants back into her life so he can make sure that John, her 13-year-old, maintains his father’s reputation by joining a gang himself. As it happens, Aleem is no match for Michael, who faces an altogether more powerful adversary: Durand Calaphas, another genius who works for the Internal Security Agency, knows all about that microbial catastrophe and still smarts from the episode years ago that branded his older brother, virologist Dr. Gifford Calaphas, a traitor. Koontz shines in providing downscale dialogue for Aleem and his peeps and brisk, memorable portraits of the many walk-on characters. The actual plot is another matter.

Heaven-storming piffle.

Kirkus Reviews