What's so perfect about the past for Sybil and Blake Gregory, a successful Manhattan couple with three children who land in San Francisco when Blake impulsively accepts the job of a lifetime as CEO of a start-up? The family moves into a grand, surprisingly affordable Pacific Heights mansion and soon meets the affable Butterfield family, who lived there a century ago. Of course the Butterfields are ghosts, and only the Gregorys can see them, but that...

Nora Brown teaches high school English and lives a quiet life in Seattle with her husband and six-year-old daughter. But one November day, moments after dismissing her class, a girl's face appears above the students' desks. 'A wild numinous face with startling blue eyes, a face floating on top of shapeless drapes of purples and blues where arms and legs should have been. Terror rushes through Nora's body, the kind of raw terror you feel when there's...