Picture the Dead is an illustrated ghost story set in Brookline, Massachusetts during the American Civil War. Haunted by the recent deaths of her twin brother and fiancé, seventeen-year-old Jennie Lovell forges an unlikely friendship in a Spiritualist photographer who helps her to expose tragic family secrets.

The illustrated photographs are based on old daguerreotypes and albumen prints of anonymous sitters, culled from the Online Prints and Photographs Reading Room of the Library of Congress. The background patterns are based on actual Victorian designs.