A girl liberated from a carnival sideshow discovers her mysterious purpose in a moving novel about family, sacrifice, and transcendent love by #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz.

The human “oddities” in the Museum of the Strange are less wondrous than the gawking rubes had been promised. But Alida is something else. The real thing. Traveling Depression-era America from carnival midways to speakeasies, Alida is resigned to an exploited and lonely life on the road as the museum’s golden ticket. Until she’s rescued by two compassionate strangers.

Franklin and Loretta Fairchild see in Alida a gifted and uncannily well-read girl in need of a loving touch and a family. With the openhearted couple and their three precociously imaginative children, Alida finds it. Yet despite everyone’s overwhelming generosity and acceptance, Alida knows she is still a very different kind of girl. Her dreams bear that out. They’re vivid, unsettling, and threatening. Alida fears that they’re also warnings. And that it’s the Fairchilds who may need rescue from a bad, bad world.

Alida will do anything to help those she now holds nearest and dearest. Empowered with a purpose to vanquish evil, she will not fail her family.

De finns. Väntande. Iakttagande. Få människor kan se dem, men Slim MacKenzie ser dem alltför tydligt. Han är välsignad - eller förbannad - med skymningsögon.

They were strangers.

A handful of people. From different backgrounds, living in different towns and cities across America, they had nothing in common - except fear.

They were victims.

Cold and stark, an unknown terror gripped their dreams and turned their days into living nightmares.

They were chosen.

And they could not escape. Deep in the heart of a sprawling desert, a dark memory called out to them, drawing them to the Tranquility Motel - where the terrifying truth was waiting...

一个落魄潦倒的艺术家，一个罹患自闭症的少年，一个滑稽剧女演员。 原本，他们的生活波澜不惊；然而，旅途中的他们却无端遭遇疯子医生的古怪针剂。一夜之间，他们的人生发生了惊天逆转。 以月光的名义，他们共同踏上了拯救自身、拯救世界的不归路……