Ghostly Suspense...

When his mother dies, young Michael Vyner does not want to go live at Hawton Mere with Sir Stephen Clarendon or his sister, Charlotte. But Sir Stephen is now his legal guardian, and Michael has nowhere else to go. But Michael soon finds out that Hawton Mere is not exactly a warm and welcoming home.

"As soon as I walked through the door I sensed it:  a strange energy that filled the air and shone like a black light from every shadow. There was a whispering that rose and fell in volume--though I felt it rather than heard it. All my senses told me there was danger--deadly danger--and yet I saw nothing untoward, save for a grim and unwelcoming hallway."

The servants at Hawton Mere are kind, but Sir Stephen is ill and possibly mad, and while Charlotte tries to be friendly, it's clear to Michael that she is uncomfortable around children. And then strange things start to happen. Michael hears banging in an empty hall, sees a reflection of something moving in an old mirror when nothing is there, and glimpses a ghostly figure with a sad, pale face in the snowy courtyard below his bedroom window.

"What kind of place was this where the dead roamed among the living?"

The Dead of Winter by Chris Priestly is the kind of ghost story I like best: quiet, haunting, and suspenseful. I guessed part of the mystery surrounding Sir Stephen, but not all of it. And Priestly is a good writer. His young narrator, Michael, is engaging and likeable. And the ending didn't disappoint like ghost stories sometimes do. I ended up really liking this book.

Happy Reading!