Expiration Date (Tim Powers)

This modern ghost story ties together movies, electricity, drug trafficking, and the ghost of Thomas  Edison in a complex magical tale. An 11-year-old boy, in preteen rebellion against his parents, triggers a series of events that brings up the dark history of several other people: twins mourning the death of their father decades ago, a psychiatrist whose pretend therapy became fatally real, and a dead man clinging to the world in a run-down apartment building. They come together to battle those who stay alive by eating the lives, and deaths, of others, and to fight their way to clean lives of their own. It is a fascinating story, though I found myself confused by the mechanics of it all in many places.