All eighteen-year-old Emily Heath wants before college is a summer vacation at the beach. Instead she's in Washington D.C. at the height of tourist season, looking for an excuse to leave early. She gets one in the worst way possible; a nuclear bomb destroys a large section of the capital. Emily wakes up in the hospital. She's received a massive dose of radiation, her immune system is failing, and she's going to die unless she accepts Colonel Richard Logner's bargain: He has a cure, but in return she must agree to participate in a military experiment. The treatment's side effects include...

Moments after a fatal car crash, fifteen-year-old Destin Shaw is a shadow. None of the living can see or hear him; he's utterly alone until Jillian Robards appears. She can see him-but then, she's dead too. Jillian brings Destin into the Dwellers, other dead children who aid the living: they take on the painful memories of the dying and help them to the other side. In time, the Dwellers themselves can move on, but only after they finish their service. Destin settles into his afterlife; helping the dying teaches him more about life than he ever knew alive, and he's hoping to learn more about...