A little ghostly fun...

        "My name is Rose Marshall. ... I was born in 1936. .... I made it all the way to 1953, sixteen short years of chances and choices and opportunities. And then it was over. I died on a hot summer night in my junior year of high school, driven off the road by a man who should never have been there. My body was battered almost past recognition by the accident. My spirit fared a little better, sweet sixteen for the rest of time...
       "I'm the phantom prom date, the woman at the diner, the girl in the green silk gown, and the walking girl of Route 42. But most of all, I'm the ghost of Sparrow Hill Road."

Seanan McGuire's Sparrow Hill Road reads like a collection of short stories, each chapter another ghostly tale with Rose Marshall the thread that connects them all. Rose travels the ghost roads, saving the people she can, escorting the others on their way to their next life, and avoiding Bobby Cross, the man responsible for taking her life. Her encounters with the living and dead, while not scary, are entertaining. And I liked the world McGuire has created with its strict ghostly rules and strange assortment of spirits and specters. (Although I really wish she'd given the routewitches a bigger role to play! They intrigued me.) I thought this was a fun read, although the non-linear jumps from past to present and back again throughout the entire novel really slowed the narrative for me. But that's my only complaint.

Happy Reading!

Casting the Runes...

The ghost stories of M.R. James are regarded as among the best in the genre. Born in England in 1862, Montague Rhodes James was a medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge; but he's best known for his supernatural tales. Regarding them, James said, "Two ingredients most valuable in the concocting of a ghost story are, to me, the atmosphere and the nicely managed crescendo. Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage."  Above all, James felt that his ghosts "should be malevolent or odious."

Which make these the perfect stories to read at Halloween. James' collection, Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories, contains several subtle tales of eerie suspense. I especially liked "A School Story", "Casting the Runes", and "Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance". Not all of them were as good, though; a few of the stories showed their age with a slower narrative style and endings that felt a little anti-climatic. But that's Victorian writing for you. Still, if you like a classic ghost story, try some of M.R. James'. Or, if you happen to prefer Victorian vampire stories, check out Dracula's Guest edited by Michael Sims. It's a fabulous collection of classic vampire tales written by the likes of Lord Byron, Aleksei Tolstoy, Hume Nisbet, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mary Chalmondeley and Bram Stoker.

Happy Reading!

And Happy Halloween!

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!

A ghostly read...

"Some people never leave the asylum."

This time of year always puts me in the mood for a good ghost story, and Susan Vaught's Insanity is that and more. It takes place in Never, Kentucky at the Lincoln Psychiatric Hospital, a place built on an ancient ritual ground, a place where haunts and specters roam.

"Lincoln ain't nothing but a giant thin spot between our world and the other side, and places in this hospital get even thinner due to all the sadness it sees. Time can't help moving funny around thin spots."

Enter Levi, Forest, Darius and Trina. These four teens each have a touch of magic running in their veins, and their special abilities are just what Lincoln needs. But can they survive the darkness that's coming for each of them?

This is such a fun read! Insanity has spirits and shades, hell hounds, creepy witch trees, magic spells and charms, suspense and mystery.  I really liked the four teenagers, especially Levi and Forest. They each have their own story and part to play at Lincoln. In a lot of ways, this book reminds me of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes (which is one of my all-time favorite reads). It's dark and eerie and the right amount of scary. All in all, this YA novel turned out to be the perfect ghostly fantasy for October.

Happy Reading!

Similar reads:

     The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

     Silence For the Dead by Simone St. James

     Asylum by Madeleine Roux