Imogene is young and beautiful. She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She"s also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon one afternoon in 1945. . . . Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn"t easy to make friends when you"re the only inflatable boy in town. . . . Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Now he"s an eight-foot-tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing. . . . John Finney is locked in a basement that"s stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead. . . .