Professor Reis Welling's life is idyllic. A respected professor of botany at Cornell, he's been granted early tenure, has received a grant to carry out field research in the Adirondack Forest, and has met Ellen, the love of his life. Everything is perfect-- that is until the forest turns its back on him, department heads start spying on him, Ellen starts lying to him, and all start transmitting thoughts into his head. Herein lies Reis's slow and insidious descent into a vicious and damaging world of mental illness.

Life in a seemingly placid upstate New York town turns to turmoil when the prodical son of its leading family returns home.

Nate Walker has never shied away from the hard road. Even when it meant leaving behind his family's wealth...and the fiancée who only wanted a rich man. Nothing was going to stop him from opening his own five-star restaurant. And he was on his way--until his car broke down on a dark road in the Adirondacks, leading him right to White Caps Inn...and Frankie Moorehouse. Suddenly Nate has a job he doesn't really need--and an affair that has to end when summer does. Except Frankie has a way about her. She gets under his skin.

Fifteen-year-old Jenny relates her family's misadventures homesteading in the Adirondack Mountains during the summer.

The dark-eyed boy -- The other people -- The kill -- My hands -- Horse and cart.

Ten-year-old Winks and thirteen-year-old Josh inadvertently bring a serial murderer back to life when they use his hat and scarf to dress a snowman for a winter carnival, freeing him to seek revenge against the vigilantes who killed him.

Robert Sochia, a young man just acquitted of murder, returns to face the hostility of his home town not far from the Canadian border. Julia, a recently arrived music student, befriends him and helps him start a new life. When a suspicious fire burns his house to the ground, the outlaw suddenly abducts Julia. This small, provincial community gathers a search party to rescue her, with comical and disastrous results. -- cover.