To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine, was just their hometown: familiar, well-ordered, a good place to live. It was the children who saw--and felt--what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, It lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each person's deepest dread. Sometimes It reached up, seizing, tearing, killing ... The adults, knowing better, knew nothing....

"Georgette Castle's family runs the best home renovation business in town, but she picked balloons instead of blueprints and they haven't taken her seriously since. Frankly, she's over it. Georgie loves planning children's birthday parties and making people laugh, just not at her own expense. She's determined to fix herself up into a Woman of the World... whatever that means. Phase one: new framework for her business (a website from this decade, perhaps?)...

Simple Pierrot dreams of his saucy sweetheart Columbine in this original story featuring the traditional comic characters.

Los Angeles, 1991. Ambassador Maximilian Ophuls, one of the makers of the modern world, is murdered in broad daylight on his illegitimate daughter India's doorstep, slaughtered by a knife wielded by his Kashmiri Muslim driver, a mysterious figure who calls himself Shalimar the clown. The dead man is a charismatic World War Two Resistance hero, a man of formidable intellectual ability, a former US ambassador to India and subsequently America's counter-terrorism...

"Dear Diary, Can you believe Lucky, Abigail and I are traveling to a circus exhibition with El Circo dos Grillos? It's supposed to be the most spectacular event, with tons of circuses performing their best acts and sharing in amazing traditions. I'll even get do my clown act...but I'm feeling a bit nervous about it. I wish Dad and Mom were here to help me out. Especially now, since this girl Catalina keeps acting like her clown performance is going...