In the Night Room (a sequel to Peter Straub's
Lost Boy Lost Girl) brings back Timothy Underhill, the children's book author who realizes he made a error in his previous novel. He sets out to correct it in his new novel, but he begins to see the ghost of his dead sister who is trying to warn him about something. He then begins to receive fragmentary e-mails with return addresses from dead acquaintances. Willy Patrick, another young adult author, is driven to rescue her daughter, although her daughter and husband may have been murdered by her fiancé. When Timothy meets Willy, he realizes that she's written the same book he has, and the lines of reality and fiction, sanity and insanity begin to blur for him, and he must find and fight the evil that has surrounded him.
In the Night Room has received glowing reviews with the Philadelphia Inquirer saying, "This is popular fiction of an intriguingly high order, deftly exploring how imagination not only draws on reality, but can actually shape it."
