Salon runs "Perfect Circle" excerpts

Salon is printing excerpts from Sean Stewart's "Perfect Circle" starting today. I don't know anything about the book, although it comes from a well respected small press publisher and at least one other person has recommended it. Here's the first paragraph:

I woke up sweaty and shaking. Tense. I had been dreaming about ghost roads again. This one was leaving an apartment complex swimming pool, and there was a little girl walking down it. She was looking back over her shoulder at me, eyes solemn behind a cheap kid's snorkeling mask, and wearing pool flippers; slow dreamy duck-steps, a trail of wet inhuman footprints disappearing into the dim black and white houses, the humming silence.