Retired third-base coach George 'Granny' Grantham chronicles the story of Billy Blakely, a catcher called up from Iowa to play for the New Jersey Titans in the spring of 1957. A powerful hitter and passionate catcher, Blockade Billy becomes notorious for drawing blood out of runners who collide with him at home plate. However, Billy holds a sinister secret, one that causes baseball officials to remove his name from the record books.

An eleven-year-old boy's violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City's most popular citizens: Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson orders a quick and very public arrest. The case seems ironclad, especially when Anderson and the district attorney are able to add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses....

Cujo, a two-hundred-pound Saint Bernard, becomes infected with rabies and kills four people in Maine.

Novelist Mike Noonan, still grieving the death of his wife after four years, retreats to Sara Laughs, his isolated summer home, but the peace he is seeking slips even further from his grasp when he finds the community in the grip of a powerful millionaire, and his hideaway becomes the site of ghostly visitations.

The character of George Granny Grantham recounts the story of William "Blockade Billy" Blakely, who was called in to fill a spot for the New Jersey Titans in the spring of 1957 and exhibited tenacity in the game as well as some disturbing eccentricities.

"Dr. Louis Creed and his wife Rachel chose rural Maine to settle his family and bring up their children. It was a better place than smog-covered Chicago-- or so he thought. But that was before he became acquainted with the old pet burial ground located in the backwoods of the quiet community of Ludlow. The place has a power-- it seeps into your dreams and you wake up sweating with fear. It is a place that strikes dread into the lives of all who share...