FREE: "Breathless" by Dean Koontz

The endearing golden retriever heroine of The Darkest Evening of the Year (2007) and the real-life golden retriever star of A Big Little Life (2009) acquire a male peer in Koontz’s new novel, an Irish wolfhound named Merlin despite the fact that, unlike his female colleagues, he does nothing magical. He’s also not one of the protagonists, though he’s the faithful friend of four of them: his master, his vet, and two creatures entirely new under the sun, who, adorably child-sized, big-eyed, and furry, seem at first closer akin to him than to humans but turn out to be genetically indistinguishable from Homo sapiens. The pair, dubbed Puzzle and Riddle by Merlin’s people, arrive simultaneously with thousands more pairs of their kind all over the globe—and just in time. For, in Breathless, as in many previous Koontz novels, this old world’s in a helluva fix. But this time, Puzzle, Riddle, and their kin may set things right. At any rate, the creatures’ arrival immediately triggers one outstandingly good development: an angry drunk sobers up and lightens up enough to seek out the parents he’s long been estranged from; en route, he thwarts a heinous criminal. Furthermore, because the newcomers are considerably more than they initially seem, they effect more good, including their own escape from Department of Homeland Security detention. A first-rate first-alien-encounter yarn.