A spellbinding collection of tales interconnected by the strange highways of human experience,the adventures, terrors, failures, and triumphs encountered on the roads that are chosen, and on those detoured by fate.
-Strange Highways: A failed author returns to his hometown after many years to attend his father's funeral, only to find himself suddenly and inexplicably thrust back through time to relive a traumatic event from his past, and possibly to find redemption. Koontz cites the Centralia, Pennsylvania mine fire as an inspiration for this story.
-The Black Pumpkin: A twelve-year-old boy tries to stop his sadistic older brother from buying a monstrous looking pumpkin from a creepy pumpkin carver, but to no avail. That night, the frightening truth about the pumpkin and its carver is revealed.
-Miss Attila the Hun: A bizarre alien lifeform tries to take over the planet, and the only thing in its way is a schoolteacher known as Miss Atilla the Hun.
-Down in the Darkness: after a couple buys a new house, the husband discovers a mysterious door that seems to appear and disappear at will. When he goes through it, he discovers a horrifying secret.
-Ollie's Hands: a young man with extraordinary psychic abilities and his tragic attempt to pursue a relationship with a woman whose life he saves.
-Snatcher: A loathsome purse snatcher steals a purse from a strange old woman, only to find out too late that there was far more to her, and her purse, than met the eye.
-Trapped: A woman and her son trying to fend off an attack by giant, mutated rats.
-Bruno: A private eye meets a "probability cop" from another dimension, and together they hunt down a dangerous alien.
-We Three: Three siblings with special powers eliminate the rest of mankind, thinking that they're the "new race", but soon one of them is pregnant with a creature even more powerful who just might eliminate them.
-Hardshell: A wounded cop stalks a killer through an abandoned warehouse, but there's more to this seemingly stereotypical situation than meets the eye.
-Kittens: The first short story Koontz ever sold. An abused girl learns the horrible truth about God "taking her kittens to Heaven", and she devises an even more horrible revenge.
-The Night of the Storm: A group of intelligent robots go on a hunting trip in the woods, where they learn that the myth of "human beings" may not be a myth after all.
-Twilight of the Dawn: A devout atheist who finds his lack of faith challenged in the wake of his son's painful death from cancer.
-Chase [novella]: A Vietnam war hero goes on the hunt for a murderous criminal.