Flicker is a modern-day ghost story set in a haunted diner.

When Charlie Brace buys, refurbishes, and opens a diner that’s been up on blocks for many years, he gets much more than he bargained for, from neon signs that flicker insanely, to a quirky staff, to odd customers, to an even stranger hobo-philosopher who picks through his dumpster while lecturing him on the moon and mythology, to the amorous advances of the previous owner’s widow, to a mysterious mother and child who appear at the diner one morning carrying steaming baskets of pies that are, in a word, charmed, to the appearance of ghosts with murderous intentions.

Are the mother and child ghosts, or do they just bake great pies? What about Charlie’s head waitress, who dresses like a woman from the 1950s and spouts diner lingo no one has used in years? What about the man in the dumpster? What about the widow, who seems to be holding back about her husband’s death? And what about the customers, who grow anxious and impatient whenever the pie runs out? Who exactly are the ghosts, why are they haunting the diner, and why do they want to kill Charlie?

L. Rett Boswell is also the author of The Leadership Secrets of Squirrels and Skeleton: A Bare Bones Mystery.