The House at the End of the World

Katie has retreated to Jacob's Ladder, an island in the Chesapeake, to paint and to grieve a family she lost to violence. Solitude is the point. She keeps to her routines, avoids the mainland, and expects nothing from the neighbouring islands.

Then she finds a girl, injured and terrified, and the men hunting her are not the worst of it. What has come to the bay is something engineered and monstrous, and Katie's careful isolation becomes a siege.

The House at the End of the World is Dean Koontz at his most stripped-down: a small cast, an island under threat, and a heroine who has already survived the unsurvivable once.