What if you died and brought the dead back with you?
A terrible hit and run accident took Celeste Cleary's life until doctors managed to bring her back. But now she's... different. Once a respected scientist, she walks the thin veil between the living and the dead.
As she struggles to return to her former life, Celeste receives an email-a heart-wrenching letter from a stranger, a woman begging for help locating her seventeen-year-old sister, Katie, who vanished a year before.
Celeste's first impulse is to say no-what does she know about finding a missing person?
But late one snowy night Celeste is drawn into the forest where the spectral form of Katie awaits her and, though the girl does not speak, the message is clear. Katie wants Celeste to uncover the truth behind her disappearance.
As Celeste delves into the mystery surrounding Katie's vanishing, she is ensnared in a sinister labyrinth of secrets and lies. Someone doesn't want her to find out the truth and there's nothing they won't do to stop her.
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What began as an innocuous advice column for Celeste Cleary has transformed into an all-consuming obsession, and her former existence as a scientist now feels like a distant memory.
As she immerses herself in the troubles of others-at times solving their dilemmas with messages from beyond the grave-an ability that has invaded her life since the hit-and-run accident that nearly killed her months before, Celeste grapples with the news that the accident may have been attempted murder.
One afternoon, a disturbing letter arrives at her advice column.
A young woman haunted by the ghostly absence of her birth mother begs for help in tracing her mysterious past. Celeste steps into the labyrinth of secrets, unaware that she is traveling down a treacherous road that might lead her into the clutches of a remorseless killer.
A year ago, a hit-and-run nearly killed Celeste Cleary. Instead, it left her with a chilling gift: the ability to see the dead. She uses her new power to unravel the mysteries behind the missing and murdered.
But now it's time for her to return home to West Virginia, where her own life began, and where her mother abandoned her family decades before.
Celeste is about to confront her darkest fears. And some of them might lead her right to the truth about her own past—a truth buried deep, waiting to be unearthed.