MacHale (the Pendragon series) launches the Morpheus Road trilogy with this creepy, tension-filled adventure, in which 16-year-old Marsh Seaver is terrorized by forces he doesn't understand. It's the first week of summer, and Marsh is all alone, his widower father out of town on business, and his best friend Cooper a few hours away at Thistledown Lake with his family. Things get seriously weird when Gravedigger, a skeletal comic book character of Marsh's design, starts stalking him. Convinced that only Cooper can help him, Marsh enlists the aid of Cooper's beautiful yet frosty sister, Sydney, to get to the lake. Once they arrive, they learn that Cooper is missing and true terror is just beginning. Spooky and fraught with peril, this ghost story evokes campfire horrors and classic slasher films with a relentless onslaught of macabre imagery and mortal danger. What is Gravedigger, what does he want, and how does it all tie into Cooper's fate? Unfortunately, as the first act in a larger piece, few answers are revealed, and numerous questions are left unresolved in anticipation of the next installment. Ages 10–up. (Apr.)