You are about to encounter the extraordinary. The author-one of the most popular writers of our time, the creator of nine#1 hardcover national bestsellers and twelve#1 paperback national bestsellers. The book-an exceptional collection of two complete novels and twelve novelettes and short stories... as only the man universally hailed as a master of imaginative fiction can create them. Now explore the strange highways of human experience: the adventures and ter-rors, failures and triumphs that we face on our way from birth to death. It is a journey down wrong roads that can lead to unexpectedly and stunningly right destinations... into subterranean depths where the darkness of the human soul breeds in every conceivable form... over unfamiliar terrain populated by the denizens of hell. It is a world of unlikely heroes, haunted thieves, fearsome predators, vengeful children, and suspiciously human-like robots.