Elaine "Ellie" Harrison has just moved from Minnesota to Annapolis, Maryland while her parents take a year-long sabbatical to continue their medieval studies in nearby Washington D.C. Her new high school, Avalon High, seems like a typical high school with the stereotypical students: Lance the jock, Jennifer the cheerleader, Marco, the bad boy/desperado, and Will, the senior class president, quarterback, and all around good guy. But not everyone at Avalon High is who they appear to be, not even Ellie herself. Eventually, it becomes apparent that Avalon High is a situation where the ancient Arthurian legend is repeating itself.
Husband, wife, and daughter have moved from Boston to Williamstown. At 16, Samantha treats her mother shabbily, but when the two of them are in a horrific car crash, the mother wills Sam to live, somehow losing her own life while her spirit enters Sam.
Courtney Snow, an author with writer's block, still haunted by the suicide of her best friend while they were in prep school, finds herself teaching at the very same school while trying to get back on her feet. She encounters a young student, Laurel, who seems in every way to be the reincarnation of her best friend from years ago. Laurel seems to know things about Courtney that only dead friend would have known. Is she losing her mind or is it all a cruel hoax?
Even though Sam Wheat, the successful investment counsellor, still finds it difficult to express his deeper feelings for her after all these years, his young potter girlfriend, Molly Jensen, is the love of his life. However, a curious case of a systematic discrepancy will prepare the ground for a hideous urban homicide in one of Manhattan's dark alleys, trapping, seemingly forever, the unfortunate deceased's immortal soul in the realm of the mortals. With the condemned spirit unable to interact with the physical world--and as Molly's life, too, is in grave danger--Sam will have to turn to the spiritual medium, Oda Mae Brown, to warn and protect her. Can Oda and the ghost settle the unfinished business in time?