Twenty-three-year-old Jesse Burns lives a tranquil life as the coffin maker in the enthusiastically eerie town of Gregor's Hollow.Here, the By the Pricking of My Crumbs Bakery sells deep-fried candy corn year round, and manmade mist swirls through the streets every afternoon at three-thirty. As for the graveyard bells that chime at midnight and the Victorian portrait that materializes in the hotel guest rooms? Well, no one can account for those, but they look impressive in the brochure.Few in the town are admired more than the trustworthy, if reclusive, coffin maker. Praised for his intricate carvings and flamboyant artistry, Jesse creates his masterpieces in the workshop that belonged to his father, the previous coffin maker who vanished nine years ago.Jesse's isolated routine is disturbed when Death appears on his doorstep one October evening. Wearing a sharply pressed suit and a condescending smile, Death demands eight coffins by Halloween. Jesse is horrified to learn that the coffins are intended for Death's next eight victims-all of them citizens of Gregor's Hollow. In exchange for the eight coffins, Death will tell Jesse what happened to his father.Jesse builds the coffins but refuses to stand by and wait for them to fill with corpses. Together with an alluring and untrustworthy stranger, he seeks the answer he needs to thwart Death's plan.
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