Life is different in Peculiar County.

So is death, as Dibby Caldwell, the fifteen-year-old daughter of Hangwell's mortician, is about to find out.

Witches lurk in the shadows.

A menacing creature haunts the skies.

And the dead refuse to stay dead.

A cry for help in the middle of the night finds Dibby in the neighbor's cornfield, where the ghost of a young boy manifests, clings to her, and pleads with her to help him. Aided by the new kid in town, James Mackleby, the teenager launches her investigation, much to the consternation of some of the townsfolk. She's told not to stir up old memories, and she soon learns that some folks will do anything to keep her from learning the truth. Her world crumbles when she discovers her own father knows more than he's saying, and now she doesn't know who to trust.

As if her life needs any further complications, she has to deal with her growing feelings for the town's bad boy, who has proven himself unreliable and not very trustworthy, but she needs to trust someone. In her search for the truth, she unearths the supernatural roots of her hometown and finds allies in the least likely characters, people she had at one time considered prime suspects. But will her kind heart and the search for justice prove to be the death of her?