Imogene is young, beautiful . . . and dead, waiting in the Rosebud Theater one afternoon in 1945. . . .

Francis was human once, but now he''s an eight-foot-tall locust,and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing. . . .

John is locked in a basement stained with the blood of half a dozen murdered children, and an antique telephone, long since disconnected, rings at night with calls from the dead. . . .

Nolan knows but can never tell what really happened in the summer of ''77, when his idiot savant younger brother built a vastcardboard fort with secret doors leading into other worlds. . . .

The past isn''t dead. It isn''t even past. . . .

Joe Hill is the author of a previous novel, Heart-Shaped Box, a story collection, 20th Century Ghosts, and an occasional comic series, Locke & Key.