Like all small rural towns, Canaan, West Virginia has its secrets: lies, infidelities, and even murder are kept hidden in the minds of the residents there. But there is one secret they will go to any lengths to protect. A little girl named Gabrielle, believed to be an angel, has been kept chained in the church basement for over a century now, prisoner of an ancient pact. Unaging and unearthly beautiful, Gabrielle has the power to heal. A madman pursues outsiders Adam and Holly Mansfield to Canaan, intent on kidnapping their daughter. Once there they discover there is one other secret in Canaan. Chained deep in the heart of the mountain is another being, a demon called Scratch. If Gabrielle is freed, Scratch will be as well, and his vengeance and evil will consume the town.

On the first day of summer vacation, eleven-year-old Artie falls into a lake and begins to drown. While underwater, Artie has a vision of Elaine, a little girl who died there decades ago in battle with an ancient evil being, a being that is awakening once more. Unless Artie and his friends can stop the creature called the Winter King from entering our world, it will turn everything in its path to its dark purposes. As the kids struggle with the universal issues of friendship, acceptance, love, and impending adulthood, they learn that they are not the first to fight this evil. Armed with two unusual magical items-a pocketknife and a baseball trophy-and with their bonds of affinity, they will brave the forbidding woods to face their foe, full in the knowledge that some of them will not return.

Everyone has had a long-distance crush on a celebrity. We fall in love with the image of a movie star, a rock star, a sports figure; little crushes that are cute when you're young and embarrassing when you're older. Forty-year-old Nick Chambers is a fan of an obscure British musician named Morrigan Blue. She's beautiful, with a sexy voice and a sensuous stage presence. He knows it is just a crush, one of many in his years as a music fan. What happens when you get a chance to meet your hero? What happens when the attraction is returned? What happens when the object of your affection begins stalking you? What if she isn't exactly human?

"I am neither historian nor bard. I am simply a man who was blessed to live at the time of King Arthur. You may have heard my name, though there are precious few stories told of my exploits. I need no tales, for I lived the greatest of them all. "I am Bedivere, the King's best friend, his right hand man. I was his horse lord and the first Knight of the Round Table. I was the first man to know him and the last man to see him alive. I followed his orders and carried his secrets. Where others saw only his crown I was privileged to know the man. This is my story. "But my story is his story."