Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz (Dean Ray Koontz, born 9 July 1945 in Everett, Pennsylvania) is an American novelist of suspense, horror and science fiction, best known for books such as Watchers, Intensity and Odd Thomas.

His first novel, the science fiction story Star Quest, appeared in 1968. Through the 1970s he wrote under many pseudonyms, among them Leigh Nichols, Brian Coffey, K. R. Dwyer, Owen West and Richard Paige. Whispers (G. P. Putnam's Sons, April 1980) was his first novel on the New York Times Best Seller list and is credited with launching his career as a bestselling author, and Strangers (1986) was his first hardcover bestseller. The Eyes of Darkness was first published as a Pocket Books paperback on 10 May 1981 under the Leigh Nichols name. Later successes include Watchers (1987), Intensity, published by Headline in Britain in November 1995 ahead of Knopf's American edition in January 1996, and Odd Thomas (Bantam, 2003), which began a seven-novel series ending with Saint Odd (2015). He has published more than 105 novels, with sales of over 500 million copies.

For collectors

His pseudonymous paperbacks of the 1970s and early 1980s, such as the Leigh Nichols first of The Eyes of Darkness (1981), are easily missed by collectors searching under Koontz. The Putnam first of Whispers (1980) marks his breakthrough, and the Headline edition of Intensity (November 1995) appeared two months before the Knopf edition, making the British printing the first.