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Koontz, Dean R. One Door Away from Heaven ISBN 13 : 9780553801378

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9780553801378: One Door Away from Heaven
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Book by Dean Koontz

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Chapter One

THE WORLD IS FULL of broken people. Splints, casts, miracle drugs, and time can’t mend fractured hearts, wounded minds, torn spirits.

Currently, sunshine was Micky Bellsong’s medication of choice, and southern California in late August was an apothecary with a deep supply of this prescription.

Tuesday afternoon, wearing a bikini and oiled for broiling, Micky reclined in a lounge chair in her aunt Geneva’s backyard. The nylon webbing was a nausea-inducing shade of green, and it sagged, too, and the aluminum joints creaked as though the lawn furniture were far older than Micky, who was only twenty-eight, but who sometimes felt ancient.

Her aunt, from whom fate had stolen everything except a reliable sense of humor, referred to the yard as “the garden.” That would be the rosebush.

The property was wider than it was deep, to allow the full length of the house trailer to face the street. Instead of a lawn with trees, a narrow covered patio shaded the front entrance. Here in back, a strip of grass extended from one side of the lot to the other, but it provided a scant twelve feet of turf between the door and the rear fence. The grass flourished because Geneva watered it regularly with a hose.

The rosebush, however, responded perversely to tender care. In spite of ample sunshine, water, and plant food, in spite of the regular aeration of its roots and periodic treatment with measured doses of insecticide, the bush remained as scraggly and as blighted as any specimen watered with venom and fed pure sulfur in the satanic gardens of Hell.

Face to the sun, eyes closed, striving to empty her mind of all thought, yet troubled by insistent memories, Micky had been cooking for half an hour when a small sweet voice asked, “Are you suicidal?”

She turned her head toward the speaker and saw a girl of nine or ten standing at the low, sagging picket fence that separated this trailer space from the one to the west. Sun glare veiled the kid’s features.

“Skin cancer kills,” the girl explained.

“So does vitamin D deficiency.”

“Not likely.”

“Your bones get soft.”

“Rickets. I know. But you can get vitamin D in tuna, eggs, and dairy products. That’s better than too much sun.”

Closing her eyes again, turning her face to the deadly blazing heavens, Micky said, “Well, I don’t intend to live forever.”

“Why not?”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but nobody does.”

“I probably will,” the girl declared.

“How’s that work?”

“A little extraterrestrial DNA.”

“Yeah, right. You’re part alien.”

“Not yet. I have to make contact first.”

Micky opened her eyes again and squinted at the ET wannabe. “You’ve been watching too many reruns of The X Files, kid.”

“I’ve only got until my next birthday, and then all bets are off.” The girl moved along the swooning fence to a point where it had entirely collapsed. She clattered across the flattened section of pickets and approached Micky. “Do you believe in life after death?”

“I’m not sure I believe in life before death,” Micky said.

“I knew you were suicidal.”

“I’m not suicidal. I’m just a wiseass.”

Even after stepping off the splintered fence staves onto the grass, the girl moved awkwardly. “We’re renting next door. We just moved in. My name’s Leilani.”

As Leilani drew closer, Micky saw that she wore a complicated steel brace on her left leg, from the ankle to above the knee.

“Isn’t that a Hawaiian name?” Micky asked.

“My mother’s a little nuts about all things Hawaiian.”

Leilani wore khaki shorts. Her right leg was fine, but in the cradle of steel and padding, her left leg appeared to be malformed.

“In fact,” Leilani continued, “old Sinsemilla — that’s my mother — is a little nuts, period.”

“Sinsemilla? That’s a . . .”

“Type of marijuana. Maybe she was Cindy Sue or Barbara way back in the Jurassic period, but she’s called herself Sinsemilla as long as I’ve known her.” Leilani settled into a hideous orange-and-blue chair as decrepit as Micky’s bile-green lounge. “This lawn furniture sucks.”

“Someone gave it to Aunt Geneva for nothing.”

“She ought to’ve been paid to take it. Anyway, they put old Sinsemilla in an institution once and shot like fifty or a hundred thousand volts of electricity through her brain, but it didn’t help.”

“You shouldn’t make up stuff like that about your own mother.”

Leilani shrugged. “It’s the truth. I couldn’t make up anything as weird as what is. In fact, they blasted her brain several times. Probably, if they’d done it just once more, old Sinsemilla would’ve developed a taste for electricity. Now she’d be sticking her finger in a socket about ten times a day. She’s an addictive personality, but she means well.”

Although the sky was a furnace grate, although Micky was slick with coconut-scented lotion and sweat, she’d grown all but oblivious of the sun. “How old are you, kid?”

“Nine. But I’m precocious. What’s your name?”

“Micky.”

“That’s a name for a boy or a mouse. So it’s probably Michelle. Most women your age are named Michelle or Heather or Courtney.”

“My age?”

“No offense intended.”

“It’s Michelina.”

Leilani wrinkled her nose. “Too precious.”

“Michelina Bellsong.”

“No wonder you’re suicidal.”

“Therefore — Micky.”

“I’m Klonk.”

“You’re what?”

“Leilani Klonk.”

Micky cocked her head and frowned skeptically. “I’m not sure I should believe anything you tell me.”

“Sometimes names are destiny. Look at you. Two pretty names, and you’re as gorgeous as a model — except for all the sweat and your face puffy with a hangover.”

“Thanks. I guess.”

“Me, on the other hand — I’ve got one pretty name followed by a clinker like Klonk. Half of me is sort of pretty — ”

“You’re very pretty,” Micky assured her.

This was true. Golden hair. Eyes as blue as gentian petals. The clarity of Leilani’s features promised that hers was not the transient beauty of childhood, but an enduring quality.

“Half of me,” Leilani conceded, “might turn heads one day, but that’s balanced by the fact that I’m a mutant.”

“You’re not a mutant.”

The girl stamped her left foot on the ground, causing the leg brace to rattle softly. She raised her left hand, which proved to be deformed: The little finger and the ring finger were fused into a single misshapen digit that was connected by a thick web of tissue to a gnarled and stubby middle finger.

Until now, Micky hadn’t noticed this deformity. “Everyone’s got imperfections,” she said.

“This isn’t like having a big schnoz. I’m either a mutant or a cripple, and I refuse to be a cripple. People pity cripples, but they’re afraid of mutants.”

“You want people to be afraid of you?”

“Fear implies respect,” Leilani said.

“So far, you’re not registering high on my terror meter.”

“Give me time. You’ve got a great body.”

Disconcerted to hear such a thing from a child, Micky covered her discomfort with self-deprecation: “Yeah, well, by nature I’m a huge pudding. I’ve got to work hard to stay like this.”

“No you don’t. You were born perfect, and you’ve got one of those metabolisms tuned like a space-shuttle gyroscope. You could eat half a cow and drink a keg of beer every day, and your butt would actually tighten up a notch.”

Micky couldn’t remember the last time that she’d been rendered speechless by anyone, but with this girl, she was nearly befuddled into silence. “How would you know?”

“I can tell,” Leilani assured her. “You don’t run, you don’t power walk — ”

“I work out.”

“Oh? When was your last workout?”

“Yesterday,” Micky lied.

“Yeah,” said Leilani, “and I was out waltzing all night.” She stamped her left foot again, rattling her leg brace. “Having a great metabolism is nothing to be ashamed about. It’s not like laziness or anything.”

“Thanks for your approval.”

“Your boobs are real, aren’t they?”

“Girl, you are an amazing piece of work.”

“Thanks. They must be real. Even the best implants don’t look that natural. Unless there’s major improvement in implant technology, my best hope is to develop good boobs. You can be a mutant and still attract men if you’ve got great boobs. That’s been my observation, anyway. Men can be lovely creatures, but in some ways, they’re pathetically predictable.”

“You’re nine, huh?”

“My birthday was February twenty-eighth. That was Ash Wednesday this year. Do you believe in fasting and penitence?”

With a sigh and a laugh, Micky said,...
Présentation de l'éditeur :
Hailed as “America’s most popular suspense novelist” (Rolling Stone) Dean Koontz has entered a rich new phase of his writing career that is yielding his most imaginative, meaningful, and popular work yet.

At the height of his powers as a literary craftsman, he has won the acclaim of critics as well as the allegiance of millions of fans the world over, transforming the greatest fears and hopes of our time into masterworks of dazzling originality and emotional resonance.

Now, with the stunning depth and virtuosity of his storytelling, he brings to readers one of his most gripping and richly imagined novels to date—an intoxicating story of adventure and suspense, mystery and revelation, told with humor, heart, and high art.

One Door Away From Heaven

In a dusty trailer park on the far edge of the California dream, Michelina Bellsong contemplates the choices she has made. At twenty-eight, she wants to change the direction of her troubled life but can’t find her way—until a new family settles into the rental trailer next door and she meets the young girl who will lead her on a remarkable quest that will change Micky herself and everything she knows—or thinks she knows—forever.

Despite the brace she must wear on her deformed left leg, and her withered left hand, nine-year-old Leilani Klonk radiates a buoyant and indomitable spirit that inspires Micky. Beneath Leilani’s effervescence, however, Micky comes to sense a quiet desperation that the girl dares not express.

Leilani’s mother is little more than a child herself. And the girl’s stepfather, Preston Maddoc, is educated but threatening. He has moved the family from place to place as he fanatically investigates UFO sightings, striving to make contact, claiming to have had a vision that by Leilani’s tenth birthday aliens will either heal her or take her away to a better life on their world.

Slowly, ever more troubling details emerge in Leilani’s conversations with Micky. Most chilling is Micky’s discovery that Leilani had an older brother, also disabled, who vanished after Maddoc took him into the woods one night and is now “gone to the stars.”

Leilani’s tenth birthday is approaching. Micky is convinced the girl will be dead by that day. While the child-protection bureaucracy gives Micky the runaround, the Maddoc family slips away into the night. Micky sets out across America to track and find them, alone and afraid but for the first time living for something bigger than herself.

She finds herself pitted against an adversary, Preston Maddoc, as fearsome as he is cunning. The passion and disregard for danger with which Micky pursues her quest bring to her side a burned-out detective who joins her on a journey of incredible peril and startling discoveries, a journey through terrible darkness to unexpected light.

One Door Away From Heaven is an incandescent mix of suspense and humor, fear and wonder, a story of redemption and timeless wisdom that will have readers cheering. Filled with tragedy and joy, with terror and hope, it solidifies Dean Koontz’s reputation as one of the foremost storytellers of our time. This is Dean Koontz at his very best—and it doesn’t get any better than that.
From the Hardcover edition.

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  • ÉditeurBantam Dell Pub Group
  • Date d'édition2001
  • ISBN 10 0553801376
  • ISBN 13 9780553801378
  • ReliureRelié
  • Nombre de pages606
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9780553593266: One Door Away from Heaven: A Novel

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ISBN 10 :  0553593269 ISBN 13 :  9780553593266
Editeur : Bantam, 2012
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  • 9781472248299: One Door Away from Heaven: A superb thriller of redemption, fear and wonder

    Headline, 2017
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  • 9780553582758: One Door Away from Heaven

    Bantam, 2002
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  • 9780747266815: One Door Away from Heaven: A superb thriller of redemption, fear and wonder

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  • 9780747270720: One Door Away from Heaven: A superb thriller of redemption, fear and wonder

    Feature, 2001
    Couverture rigide

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Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : New. Bantam Books Science Fiction Novels (Bantam Books) One Door Away From Heaven (EX-) (former library copy)Manufacturer: Bantam BooksProduct Line: Science Fiction Novels (Bantam Books)Type: HardcoverCopyright Date: 2001Author: Dean KoontzPage Count: 606Please review the condition and any condition notes for the exact condition of this item. All pictures are stock photos. The condition of the item you will receive is EX- - former library copy. Our grading system is explained in the terms of sale section of our bookseller page. Please feel free to contact us with any questions. Product Description:In a dusty trailer park on the far edge of the California dream, Michelina wants to change the direction of her troubled life but can't find her way. When a new family settles into the rental trailer next door, Micky meets the young girl who will change her forever.Despite her deformed left leg and withered left hand, nine-year-old Leilani Klonk radiates a buoyant and indomitable spirit that inspires Micky. Beneath Leilani's effervescence, however, Micky comes to sense a quiet desperation that the girl dares not express. Leilani's mother is little more than a child herself, and her stepfather, Preston Maddoc, is educated but threatening. Slowly, ever more troubling details emerge in Leilani's conversations with Micky. Most chilling is Micky's discovery that Leilani had an older brother, also disabled, who vanished after Maddoc took him into the woods one night and is now "gone to the stars".While the child-protection bureaucracy gives Micky the runaround, the Maddoc family slips away into the night. So Micky sets out across America to find them: for the first time living for something bigger than herself. One Door Away from Heaven is an incandescent mix of suspense and humor, fear and wonder, a story of redemption and timeless wisdom that will have readers cheering. N° de réf. du vendeur 2149303850

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