"The town knew darkness ... and the awful, heavy silence of terrifying images grotesquely dancing in and out of the shadows ... and stark white faces, huge empty eyes and long gnarled hands that reached out with lustful insistence ... and the paralyzing fear of a diabolical corruption and a hideous peril more dreadful than death ... But no one living in 'Salem's Lot dared talk about the high, sweet, evil laughter of a child ..."

To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine, was just their hometown: familiar, well-ordered, a good place to live. It was the children who saw--and felt--what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, It lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each person's deepest dread. Sometimes It reached up, seizing, tearing, killing ... The adults, knowing better, knew nothing....

When Dr. Louis Creed takes a new job and moves his family to the idyllic and rural town of Ludlow, Maine, this new beginning seems too good to be true. Yet despite Ludlow's tranquility, there's an undercurrent of danger that exists here. Those trucks on the road outside the Creed's beautiful old home travel by just a little too quickly, for one thing...as is evidenced by the makeshift pet cemetery out back in the nearby woods. Then there are the warnings...

A novice newspaperwoman gains insight into the nature of mystery itself when her journalism mentors tell her about a 25-year-old unsolved investigation involving a man found dead on an island off the coast of Maine.

"When Gwendy Peterson was twelve, a mysterious stranger named Richard Farris gave her a mysterious box for safekeeping. It offered treats and vintage coins, but it was dangerous. Pushing any of its seven colored buttons promised death and destruction. Years later, the button box entered Gwendy's life again. A successful novelist and a rising political star, she was once again forced to deal with the temptation that box represented. Now, evil forces...