Is there a better way to retreat from a cold, dreary January than curling up with a good genre book? The answer to that is ‘no’ and we have got you sorted with the ideal book to curl up with this month: Dean Koontz’s The House At The End Of The World.

In retreat from a devastating loss and crushing injustice, Katie lives alone in a fortress-like stone house on Jacob’s Ladder Island in The House At The End Of The World. Once a rising star in the art world, she finds refuge in her painting.

The neighbouring island of Ringrock houses a secret: a government research facility. And now two agents have arrived on Jacob’s Ladder in search of someone – or something – they refuse to identify. Although an air of menace hangs over these men, an infinitely greater threat has arrived, one so strange even the island animals are in a state of high alarm.

Katie soon finds herself in an epic and terrifying battle with a mysterious enemy. But Katie’s not alone after all: a brave young girl appears out of the violent squall. As Katie and her companion struggle across a dark and eerie landscape, against them is an omnipresent terror that could bring about the end of the world…

We have TWO copies of The House At The End Of The World to give away in our latest competition. To be in with a chance of winning one, simply answer the question below…

This competition closes on 1 February. Good luck!

The House At The End Of The World by Dean Koontz will be published on 24 January 2023 by Thomas & Mercer, available in Hardcover, Kindle eBook, Audiobook. Find out more with our EXCLUSIVE interview with Dean Koontz himself right here. 

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However, Katie’s isolation is short-lived after strange occurrences on Ringrock, a neighboring island, where there are rumours of secret government experiments. Katie soon finds herself in an epic and terrifying battle with a mysterious enemy. But Katie’s not alone after all: a brave young girl appears out of the violent squall. As Katie and her companion struggle across a dark and eerie landscape, against them is an omnipresent terror that could bring about the end of the world…

We spoke to Koontz to find out more about the novel, who his favourite horror villains are and what he has in store for us next…

What is The House at the End of the World about?

It’s about 98,000 words. It’s about as twisty as a cascading ristra of red chili peppers, though it won’t burn your tongue while you’re reading it. It’s about Katie, an artist who has lost everything in a tragedy of epic dimensions. Escaping a society that is in decline and may soon fall, she moves to a remote island, where she is the only inhabitant; however, her true refuge is not really the island but her art. She is fleeing from the narcissism, arrogance, and deceit of the ruling class, but soon discovers that she has escaped none of that and has in fact run full-speed into a horror far worse.

When did you first get the idea for The House at the End of the World?

I believe I was seven, having just read all of Camus and most of Proust. I was giving serious consideration to a career as a novelist, though I was equally enchanted with visions of myself as either a lion tamer or circus clown. With some reluctance, I had to admit that my command of the language and techniques of narration were not yet mature enough to tackle such a novel. Fast forward seventy years, during which I didn’t tame any lions. At the height of the establishment’s idiotic and unscientific proclamations on a wide range of issues, I knew I was ready to write Katie’s story, in which personal responsibility and courage are superior to the power and “wisdom” of the anointed. At least that’s how I remember it.

Where did you get inspiration for the island of Jacob’s Ladder? Is it based on anywhere real?

As a reader and movie buff, I’ve always liked stories in which the lead character is confined to a limited space, alone, and without easy access to help. That’s really a metaphor for life, though it’s best not to think about that. I’ve added Jacob’s Ladder and Ringrock to the end of the Thousand Island chain that extends from the St. Lawrence River into Lake Ontario. The Great Lakes are so large that a strategically placed island can feel as isolate as if the surrounding water were a sea.

Do you think an island like Ringrock exists? If so, what do you think might be happening there?

Life imitates art all the time, so surely a Ringrock is out there under another name. I have been humbled enough by life to know that my ability to imagine the extent of human arrogance and foolishness falls far short of the true extent of that arrogance and foolishness, so whatever is happening on the real-world Ringrock is even worse than anything in my book. You should consider reading this novel as vital preparation if you hope to survive what your self-appointed betters will eventually bring down on you.

We spend a lot of the book with Katie alone on a remote island. What was it like writing from this perspective?

Well, she’s alone in the sense that she has no one to turn to for help. When in a lonely wood or other remote place, most of us have had the eerie feeling that we’re not really alone, that in fact we’re watched or even being stalked. This feeling overcomes Katie early in the book, and her instinct quickly proves right. I like the atmosphere that arises out of this circumstance, the creepy sense that there’s someone or something unknown in the next room, just outside the window or on the other side of the door. And of course there often is!

The problem for the writer is that there must be a series of reveals that surprise the reader and either deepen the mystery or make the situation more terrifying. I worried that when Katie at last got off her island, the tension and suspense would diminish. When instead everything got worse, I was fiendishly delighted. Some days I wonder about myself.

Katie has a fox companion called Michael J. What made you decide that Katie’s animal companion would be a fox?

An elephant seemed too fanciful. Anyway, eventually a character will enter the story, someone for whom Katie must take responsibility, risk her own life, and thus give her a renewed sense of meaning after the catastrophic loss that drove her to the island in the first place. Until that character appears, we need some kind of spiritual companion with which she can interact and reveal her nature, for which there is no better choice than an animal. In my work, that’s likely to be a dog. But in the grip of bleakness that drove her to Jacob’s Ladder, it’s not credible that Katie would have brought a dog. So it made sense for nature to provide her with another kind of canine, a fox whose instinct about the wrongness on the island matches Katie’s own perception.

There’s a certain kind of woman who is mentally and emotionally stronger than any man, and I have long been so intrigued by them that they have frequently been my lead characters. Chyna in Intensity. Leilani in One Door Away from Heaven. Ashley Bell in Ashley Bell. Katie is another. For all the complexities and the singularities in their characters, they share the courage and determination of a huntress, as if they are descended from Diana, goddess of the moon and hunt. As such, they often have a special connection with nature.

Where do you look for inspiration when creating monsters/villains for your books?

I look in the human heart, which is deceptive above all things.

What’s your all-time favorite horror villain/monster and why? It can be one of your own!

In the work of others: The best villain would be Hannibal Lecter as portrayed in The Silence of the Lambs, but absolutely not the Lecter who evolved into a kinky romantic lead in Hannibal and poisoned forever my memory of the glorious Clarice Starling from the first book; the best monster would be the queen and all her workers in Aliens, not just because they were scary as hell, but because Cameron subtly conveys that the species is not just the most nightmarish insectile life form ever imagined——but may be, in a truly alien sense, intelligent.

In my work: I’m fond of Edgler Vess in Intensity and of the Outsider in Watchers.

What are you reading right now?

Research material about placer mining and the process of cutting and polishing gemstones. It’s riveting stuff.

What’s next for you?

I’ve delivered After Death, which is in part a new take on the Singularity, for publication in July. Another novel more in the vein of Life Expectancy and Odd Thomas is also finished, the title currently under wraps. In a spirit of optimism and with a desire to look more with-it, I intend to buy some new jeans and sneakers.

Finally, I intend to take up the ever more popular sport of pickleball, but a variety of the game that allows players to address grievances with one another using .22-caliber pistols.

The House At The End Of The World by Dean Koontz will be published 24 January 2023 by Thomas & Mercer

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She isn’t the only one drawn to the Montana farmstead. People from all walks of life have converged at the remote ranch. They are haunted, on the run, obsessed, and seeking answers to the same omniscient danger Joanna came to confront. All the while, on the outskirts of Rustling Willows, a madman lurks with a vision to save the future. Mass murder is the only way to see his frightening manifesto come to pass.

They have been brought together by an unknown power, for an unthinkable purpose, under Montana’s big dark sky. Their lives entwined, they face an encroaching horror. Unless they can defeat this threat, it will spell the end for humanity…

We speak to Dean Koontz to find out more about The Big Dark Sky…

How would you summarise The Big Dark Sky?

Joanna Chase had an exceedingly strange “secret friend” when she was a child living on a ranch in Montana. Twenty-five years later, she lives in New Mexico and has unaccountably forgotten all about that “friend” until she begins to receive messages by phone, via computer, through her TV, and otherwise that say, “I am in a dark place, Jojo. Please come and help me.” As those appeals become stranger and more insistent, Jojo is compelled to return to Rustling Willows Ranch —and soon finds that others from various walks of life have likewise been drawn there to make a terrifying discovery that will change them forever.

In it’s generous starred review, Booklist said the main villain was “completely wackadoodle but absolutely riveting,” and in all humility I agree. I would note there are two villains, and I’m not sure which is the main one.

What are the challenges when writing a story with such an obfuscated villain?

One can’t keep a villain so mysterious that the readers become frustrated and throw the book across the room. If the thrown book were to hit and seriously injure a bystander, not only the reader who threw it but possibly the writer who inspired the throwing thereof might be sued by said bystander. But it sure is fun to try to walk that mysterious-villain line. In The Big Dark Sky, I had the advantage of another villain, Asher Optime (the wackadoodle mentioned above), who is the furthest thing from obfuscated. He’s in the reader’s face, so they have someone they can love to hate while the second villain can be slowly revealed without books being thrown by previously peaceful readers.

When did you first get the idea for The Big Dark Sky and what was the writing process like for you?

Decades ago, I started collecting stories about real-life synchronicities, those incredible coincidences that are not mere coincidences at all, but meaningful (if highly mysterious) expressions of the intricate connections of all things that quantum mechanics has taught us to expect. I saw a possible novel in synchronicity, but I couldn’t figure out how to express such phenomena compellingly in a narrative. After forty years, it suddenly came together in my strange head.

The process varies from book to book, but one constant is that I immerse myself in the fictional world for sixty or more hours each week, until the world in the story seems as vivid to me as the real world. Somehow, I’ve never been committed to an institution for the delusional.

If any, what were your inspirations for writing The Big Dark Sky?

To earn money to buy toys for my dog, to occupy myself so that I wouldn’t get in trouble with the police, to avoid all kinds of tasks involving physical labor that awaited my attention, and to prove to that snarky reviewer in 1972 that I was not just a flash in the pan, among other things.

What is the theme of the book, and how did you settle on it?

There are several themes weaving under and through the narrative, not least of all the mortal danger of being enslaved, mentally, to an ideology that might seem enlightened but is at its base nihilistic. That’s the sad history of humanity, no less so in our time.

How inspirational was the setting of Montana for The Big Dark Sky?

Montana is one of the most beautiful of our 50 states, with natural wonders that take your breath away. However, the vastness of its spaces and the deeply lonely nature of many of its most scenic vistas can provide a haunting canvas. My wife and I have driven across country several times, 3,000 miles per trip, portions of it in excess of 100 miles an hour, as I love speed, but Montana is one of those places in which you slow down in a sort of wonder because it feels otherworldly.

What was your approach to creating and managing such a wide-ranging group of characters for the ensemble cast?

I stopped doing character profiles and that sort of thing more than half a century ago, when the great fear was an oncoming ice age. I didn’t stop doing profiles because I thought the ice age would force me to move to the equator before the book was written. I just bought a woolen wardrobe and decided to give my characters free will to create themselves. This is especially exhilarating with a large cast, when they start sharpening the details of their personalities by more or less stropping themselves against one another. The only “managing” problem is knowing when to move from one to the other. This is akin to the finesse necessary in screenwriting, knowing when to cut not only from one scene to another but also from one narrative line to another. A large cast can give you more options in that regard, so it is often actually easier than when you have a small cast.

What are you reading right now?

My answers to your questions, as I type them. When this is done, I will return to Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy.

What’s next for you?

A nice dinner and some cabernet sauvignon. In January, Thomas & Mercer will publish The House at the End of the World, which I believe is exceedingly scary and concerns the themes of loss and healing and the too-frequent foolishness of the elites who become world leaders. It’s got some deeply disturbing monsters, most of whom are human.

The Big Dark Sky by Dean Koontz is out now, published by Thomas & Mercer. Enter our competition to win a copy of the novel here.

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