The New York Times bestselling author and master of psychological suspense returns with his thirty-sixth novel - a fresh and frightening twist on a classic horror premise.

In John Saul's newest work of psychological terror, an adolescent girl must unleash the ghosts in an old prison to right a small town's many wrongs.

After Sarah Crane is seriously injured by her alcoholic father, she is sent to live in a foster home. But it quickly becomes clear that this family has only taken her in for the money they can get from the government. When Sarah starts school, the limp - left over from the accident - sets her apart from the rest of the students, and she makes only one friend: Nick Dunnigan, who has problems of his own and has recently been released from a mental hospital. The only other person who notices Sarah is Bettina Phillips, who lives in an old mansion known as Shutters because it was once the home of the warden at the Shutters Lake Prison for the Insane. Bettina, the art teacher at Warwick High School, recognizes in Sarah a remarkable talent that she offers to help her develop.

When Sarah enters Shutters, she feels a strange stirring, and begins to paint re-creations of crimes that may have been committed by the prison's long-dead inmates. But before Sarah can begin to unravel the mystery behind all of this, things turn ugly fast when violence befalls two of her enemies, and the town grows hungry for revenge...