**“Affecting, genuine, poignant, uplifting: a limpid, beautifully orchestrated” thriller about a family’s struggle with evil from a New York Times–bestseller (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

For Step Fletcher, his pregnant wife DeAnne, and their three children, the move to tiny Steuben, North Carolina, offers new hope and a new beginning. But from the first, life for eight-year-old Stevie is an unending parade of misery and disaster.

Cruelly ostracized at his school, Stevie retreats further and further into himself—and into a strange computer game and a group of imaginary friends.

But there is something eerie about his loyal, invisible new playmates: each shares the name of a child who has recently vanished from the sleepy Southern town. And terror grows for Step and DeAnne as the truth slowly unfolds. For their son has found something savagely evil . . . and it's coming for Stevie next.

“For Stephen King fans and those who like their suspense mixed with the supernatural.” —Library Journal

“Absorbing . . . the pull of family drama with an overlayer of rising supsense.” —Publishers Weekly