Simmons’ novel “Winter Ghosts” is connected plot-wise and compositionally with his own novel “Summer of Night.” “Unfortunately, I’m not a ghost. And I don’t know anything about life after death. I never believed in ghosts, in the existence of heaven, I don’t believe in the immortality of the soul and other similar things. Of course, I don’t remember how I died, and I don’t know any more about this event than my friend Dale Stewart. For eleven years of my life I never left Illinois. Forty-one years after my death, Dale came to the farm where I died. The winter that year was very harsh...”