Keith and Chrissie McGuire are determined to create a perfect life for themselves and their two children, having been brought up in care homes themselves. Everything is going well. However, when they decide to visit a hypnotherapist to address some residual childhood issues, Keith emerges from his hypnotic trance as Harry Walker, a petty gangster soiling the streets of Northern England.

Alice, who was a mere teenager when she was murdered, has returned in spectral form to prevent further brutal killings.For that she needs a living accomplice, a role the 21 year old Paul Lambert steps into with some trepidation. Having been clairvoyant all his life, he is used to dealing with ghosts, but this one is particularly driven and also exceptionally beautiful and seductive, so he is soon doing her bidding to a much greater extent than he ever intended.However, in time it becomes apparent that Alice is working to quite a different agenda from the one she is laying out before Paul. It isn't just a case of his disinterring her rotting body and fingering her killer, not by any means.For a start, there is a vengeful maniac who has to be stopped she hasn't quite got round to mentioning yet. Then there is the fact that she isn't the only ghost with an attitude out a-haunting either.

Julia Blackburn's mother committed suicide when Julia was sixteen. Or maybe she was murdered. Why? After a near-fatal car crash in which she had to be reconstructed bone-by-bone - a process which radically changed her outlook on life - Julia returns to the idyllic country village where her mother was brought up to ask exactly that question - why?