"A hot summer night in southern Connecticut, tide going out and the moon still rising. Laura Engstrom, fourteen years old, sits up in bed and throws the covers off".

Others, too are awakened by a chorus of night voices: Haverstraw, a thirty-nine-year-old failed writer living in his mother's attic; an old woman who lives alone; three teenage boys looking for trouble; a gang of girls who roam the night and break into houses; a lonely young man looking for love; a beautiful mannequin whose cold fiberglass arms begin to quicken; a group of restless children; and assorted dolls, toys, and animals long forgotten in an attic.

Only Steven Millhauser could transform our childhood legends of the night into a hypnotic adult tale of passionate enchantment, encounters of darkness and illumination, human passions and inhuman awakenings. Read it by the light of the moon.