Suze’s best friend from Brooklyn, Gina visits during spring break.  Suze’s step-brothers, Brad and Jake are attracted to Gina and Gina is attracted to them.  Suze finds this very confusing. Then the RLS Angels (four teenage ghosts from a nearby high school killed in a car accident) start harassing a student from Junipero Serra Mission Academy.  Suze has her hands full with this mediation.

Suze is approached by a screaming ghost needing to get a message to Red.  Father Dominic, the principal at Junipero Serra Mission Academy and fellow mediator, is desperately trying to get Suze to be more gentle with the ghosts and less combative.  Suze often finds most ghosts annoying and doesn’t listen carefully to their needs.  This fault puts Suze in a very dangerous situation with a serial killer in The Ninth Key.

Susannah (Suze) Simon’s mom has remarried and moved from New York City to Carmel, California.  Suze leaves Brooklyn to join her television journalist mom, her stepfather, and three stepbrothers in Carmel.  Suze is your normal every day sixteen-year-old girl except for one thing.  She’s a mediator.  She can see ghosts, and it’s her job to help them find their way to wherever ghosts go.  Sometimes she needs to get a little rough with the stubborn ones.  Suze also has to keep this mediator business on the down low, so her family and friends don’t think she’s weird.  This is her chance to get a fresh start in California.  The Mediator is a series.  Shadowland, the first book in the series, introduces Suze to her new surroundings which besides her new school Junipero Serra Mission Academy, new family situation, and new friends includes Jesse, a fine-looking ghost that hangs around her house, and the recently deceased Heather Chambers.  Heather hangs out at school and is one angry, vengeful ghost.  Suze will have to use all her mediator skills to get Heather to crossover.