The Girl at the Lion D'Or by Sebastian Faulks

A beautifully understated book, one reviewer described it as being like a Vermeer and it is very painterly with carefully deliniated characters.  The scene is the small French village of Janvilliers, the time between the First and Second World Wars, and a young girl Anne come to take up the post of waitress at the hotel Lion D'Or traumatised by a loss unidentified until later on in the narrative but inextricably linked to the horrors of World War I and the slaughter of Verdun.  She becomes drawn to Hartmann, recently married veteran living in his father's old manor house outside the town, and a gentle drama is drawn out backlit by the drama of France's road to Vichy and World War II, the quiet suffering of the millions of men that did make it back from the front and the memory of those who did not.

Clive Barker - The Dark Fantastic by Douglas E Winter

It took me I think three goes to read this weighty book but it was very much worth it.  This is not the usual lightweight biography of an author focusing on his or her life and the expression of themes from it in their work, this is academic in style and prose, a deep introspection into the life and literary and artistic work of an extremely complex individual, Clive Barker, perhaps most famously the creator of Hellraiser, the Books of Blood and Candyman.  Barker's work defies categorisation, straying at times into science fiction, other times fantasy and horror but always moving forwards and onwards, a mysticism grounded firmly in the material and earthly, sensual and sexual and often disturbing.  Winter uses both an erudite critique of each of Barker's major film, book and art works to date and his own correspondence with Barker to create something that does what a good biography should, sends you straight back to the books.

The Dream Merchant by Isabel Hoving

Joshua Cope is a very ordinary 11 year old boy, not particulary talented, unlike his best friend Baz who is an amazing drummer.  He has a dysfunctional but not particularly so family, he lives with his mother Mo and her partner and visits his father at the weekends.  His older sister is mildly annoying, as is her boyfriend who is always asking to see Joshua's collection.  Which is where what Joshua considers his own talent comes in, he's a good thief.  Late at night the phone rings, but none of the others in the house wakes and eventually he answers.  A strange man on the phone, he hangs up, but the calls keep coming and so begins an amazing tale of dream worlds, lost twins, broken families and high adventure rooted in the emotional landscape of four young children.  Absolutely brilliant.

A Big Little Life by Dean Koontz

Koontz's biography of Trixie, the golden retriever who changed his and his wife Gerda's lives from a work dedicated childless (but happily so) couple and turned them on to an awareness of the joyfulness with which an extraordinary dog such as Trixie meets and experiences every day.  There is no doubt that Trixie is extraordinary but it is also true that the revelations she brings to Koontz are those that experiencing life through the lives of any pet, or indeed, of a life lived in the moment, can and do bring.  Yes, it is overly sentimental and bucolic but sometimes that isn't a bad thing

The Vision by Dean Koontz

This was better than the previous version, The Face of Fear.  Here the clarivoyant is Mary Bergen, who works with police to help them solve cases.  She is accompanied by her brother and her husband, who come increasingly into conflict as to how to help her handle the emotional fallout of her work.  But now she is pursuing a serial killer and her visions have a new intensity, she is experiencing the pain of the victims and something seems to be pursuing her, something to do with the trauma buried in her past when she was sexually assaulted by the family gardener.  Gripping and much better in terms of focus and pacing, but for me the red herring was too obvious.

The Hungry Ghosts by Anne Berry

The extraordinary story of two girls, Alice, youngest daughter of a member of the colonial Hong Kong British government and the wife who only wanted to provide her husband with her son, and the girl who haunts her, the ghost of Lin Shui, a young virgin raped and murdered by a Japanese occupying solider during World War II 20 years earlier.  Alice is a ghost to her own family, unwanted by her mother, adored by her father, largely absent and unable to protect her from the increasing hostilities of her sisters and mother, and held accountable for the action of Lin who is drawn to Alice's life force and loneliness and moves and destroys objects around her as a misplaced act of affection.  As colonial rule in Hong Kong is rent asunder by civil unrest and Alice and her family are exiled to England, a country that has never been home to them, Alice's entourage is swollen by further restless spirits.  Berry handles the entire narrative beautifully, even Alice's monstrous mother is comprehendable in her own pain and reasons for the mental and physical torture she deals out to Alice, an amazing book of aching sadness.

The Face of Fear by Dean R Koontz

Graham Harris, psychic and one time climber, witnesses in absentium the brutal murder of exotic dancer Edna Mowry by the Butcher, a serial killer rapidly reducing the citizens of New York City to a state of terror, but in doing so he sets the Butcher on his own tail.  A good pursuit story that ends a little improbably but entertaingly in Harris and his girlfriend abseiling down the outside of an office building from the fortieth floor.

Trapped by Dean R Koontz and Ed Gorman

Based on one of Koontz's short stories this Gorman graphic novel has good ideas, lab rats that have been bred to enhance their intelligence and as a result are lethal, a threatened child and mother isolated on a farm, but without Koontz's extended prose there is no character development and it's not very good.

The Eyes of Darkness by Dean R Koontz

Tina Evans is an ex Vegas showgirl opening her first major show on the Strip and slowly coming to terms with the death a year earlier of her 12 year old son in a terrible crash with his scout troop in the high Sierra mountains, a crash that left his body so mangled she and her husband were advised to have a closed coffin ceremony.  Tina is now living alone, Danny's room remains unchanged and one night she hears a heavy thump from his room.  She finds Danny's blackboard overturned, on it are written two words: Not Dead.  Initially Tina believes it's a sick joke perpetrated by her ex-husband, but as the incidents increase in intensity and complexity, always saying that Danny is not dead, is in pain and needs her, she finally becomes convinced Danny is indeed not dead.  With attorney she heads for the mountains and, as often with Koontz, the answer lies underground in a secret lab where decisions are made by evil men for the 'good of the nation'.   Although this is an early Koontz novel familiar themes of a hostile government, the propensity of evil to thrive in secrecy and the benevolence of mysterious forces are already here.

The Funhouse by Dean R Koontz

This early Koontz story was written under one of his pseudonym Owen West and is a novelisation of a screenplay, which explains much of its lack of development.  The characters are very two dimensional and sympathy is difficult to find for them.  Amy Harper is a confused teenager, the daugther of a fanatical catholic alcoholic, Amy is torn between feeling that she is wicked and that her mother is the one that is not normal.  Her brother Joey is terrified by her mother's night time visits to his bedside when she belives him asleep and whispers that she is afraid that he is truly evil beneath the skin.  Their father is largely absent and ineffectual.  But Ellen hides a secret.  She is also the daughter of a fanatical catholic mother and when she was a teenager ran away to the fair to live a carny life.  She bore her handsome husband a child but he hid a terrible past of child neglect, self blame for the death of his mother and siblings in a fire, and turn to Satanism.  The child is a terrifying freak and Ellen kills the child, is beaten and left with the promise that her husband will find her and kill her children.  Obviously the fair finally comes to town and Amy and Joey end up in the Funhouse where their mother's secret almost kills them, but they escape.  Very black and white, even down to Amy's best friend who is heavily promiscous and she, her randy date and Amy's equally frisky partner, who have just agreed to a threesome, die in true Scream style.  This did, however, lay the groundwork for Twilight Eyes which is a much better version, although women still idealised in that too