A collection of short stories.Imogene is young and beautiful. She kisses like a movie star andknows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead and waitingin the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon one afternoon in 1945....Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attractingabuse. It isn't easy to make friends when you're the only inflatableboy in town....Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Nowhe's an eight-foot-tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremblewhen they hear him sing....John Finney is locked in a basement that's stained with the blood ofhalf a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is anantique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at nightwith calls from the dead....The past isn't dead. It isn't even past.