The Friend of the Family

Review Quotes:

"Decency defies evil when the carnival comes to town in Depression-era America...Will good prevail in this compassionate, emotional story? Readers' eyes may spring a few leaks, so keep your tissues handy." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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

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.

Review Citations:

• Kirkus Reviews 01/15/2026 (EAN 9781662533297, Hardcover) - *Starred Review

Contributor Bio:Koontz, Dean

International bestselling author Dean Koontz was a senior in college when he won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition. He has never stopped writing. Koontz is the author of The Forest of Lost Souls, The Bad Weather Friend, After Death, The House at the End of the World, The Big Dark Sky, and seventy-nine New York Times bestsellers, fourteen of which were #1: One Door Away from Heaven, From the Corner of His Eye, Midnight, Cold Fire, The Bad Place, Hideaway, Dragon Tears, Intensity, Sole Survivor, The Husband, Odd Hours, Relentless, What the Night Knows, and 77 Shadow Street. Hailed by Rolling Stone as "America's most popular suspense novelist," Koontz has published books in thirty-eight languages and sold more than five hundred million copies worldwide. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, he now lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Elsa, and the enduring spirits of their goldens Trixie and Anna. For more information, visit his website at www.deankoontz.com.