""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.""--BOOK JACKET.

"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 the attic."--BOOK JACKET.

"Steven Millhauser transforms our childhood legends of the night into a hypnotic adult tale of passionate enchantment, encounters of darkness and illumination, human passions and inhuman awakenings."--BOOK JACKET.