Got Ghosts?

 "I hadn't come all this way to run from whatever might be haunting this house. Protecting the living against the evil and restless dead, that's my calling, my only real purpose in life. My intuition, unscientific as it was, told me there was something here, something that might be endangering both of them ... and I wasn't going to abandon them."

The Necromancer's Library by J.L. Bryan is the twelfth Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper novel. These books are very fun ghost stories with good scares, lots of humor, a very likable heroine, and some very creepy haunted houses. I love them. 

In this one, Ellie and her ghost-hunting partner, Stacey, have been hired by two sisters to investigate a haunting at an isolated antebellum home in rural Georgia. It's more library than house, with walls of overflowing bookshelves in every room. They once belonged to Professor Marconi and include medieval occult manuscripts along with books on conjuring spirits, contacting ghosts, and raising the dead. Marconi died mysteriously a few months ago. Is he the one haunting the mansion? Or is the spirit something darker and more demonic? Ellie is determined to find out. 

A house full of arcane and esoteric books is the perfect setting for a haunting. And some very scary things take place in this old house. I loved the mystery and suspense. Stacey's boyfriend, Jake, who is a CPA and reluctant psychic, comes for a weekend to help them out with their case; he always makes me laugh. And that ghostly ending? It's a good one! This book is a perfect read for October. But then, any of J.L. Bryan's books are. 

Happy Reading! 

Other J.L. Bryan ghost stories I've reviewed:

Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper

The Crawling Darkness

Maze of Souls

The Family Plot by Cherie Priest

 Music City Salvage has just landed the Withrow Estate; Dahlia Dutton is in charge of stripping out everything that's valuable. It's a job she does well. But there's something about this house that's different.

"She didn't want to start work on the Withrow house. This wasn't some favor she was doing for an old friend; this wasn't a restoration gig to preserve a landmark. This was a vivisection, a slow slaughter of a thing on its last legs. She loved the house, and she loved all its parts, so she hated her job, this time. She didn't want to take anything. She wanted to fix everything, but that wasn't up to her."

And what is the house feeling? Angry. Unloved. Lost. 

Or that just might be something in the house.

Then there's the cemetery plot Dahlia finds near the house. And the ghost she thought she saw: a girl in a yellow dress. The rest of her crew is seeing ghosts, too. A soldier and a little boy. And strange things are happening at night. It looks like the secrets of Withrow house are finally starting to come out.

There are some good thrills and chills in this one. And some memorable characters, too. I really liked the beginning when Dahlia and the others first arrive at the house. The big scares come in the second half of the book, along with those ghostly revelations of what happened in the past. They were good, too, if a little convoluted at times. But the epilogue bugged me. I hate when authors ruin things at the very end, because the rest of the book is an entertaining ghost story. So while I didn't end up loving this one, I did like it a lot. (And if you decide to read it...skip the epilogue!)

Happy Reading!

A haunting read...

 "He'd thought Rookward would be a sanctuary, their safe shelter to keep the hungry tiger out. But it had become a cage instead."

 Guy's life isn't going well. Not only has he lost his fiancee and his job, he's had to move back in with his mother. So when he finds the deed to Rookward House in his mother's attic, he has a glimmer of hope. If he can fix it up and sell it, he might have enough money to make a fresh start somewhere else. But while Rookward House has been abandoned for fifty years, it's not exactly empty. Doors open and shut; Guy hears footsteps and the crackle of a baby monitor; he even sees the face of a woman with long, dark hair. Either he's losing his mind, or there's a malevolent spirit haunting Rookward House.

"His mind unravelled as it fought to make sense of what he'd seen. ... This house is messing with my mind. He'd never been a jumpy sort of person, but he guessed the isolation and claustrophobic spaces were making him see things that didn't exist."

 The Haunting of Rookward House by Darcy Coates is an entertaining ghost story, but then I always like a book with a haunted house in it. Guy's a likable protagonist, and the back story of Rookward House is suitably creepy. I liked the way the truth about it unfolded bit by bit. Most of the intense ghostly action doesn't take place until the second half of the book, but then...it's page-turning, chilling and scary fun. Talk about a creepy psycho ghost! Overall, this one's a good, quick read that's perfect for this time of year.

Happy Reading!

Other haunting reads by Darcy Coates:

(My Review)

 

(My Review)

From my TBR shelf...

Title & Author:  The Haunting of Ashburn House by Darcy Coates

Why I bought it:  I like Darcy Coates; and I like books about creepy old houses that might be haunted.

The premise:  Ashburn House holds many secrets:  there isn't a single mirror in any of its rooms; there are boxes and boxes of candles in the attic; rumor has it that the Ashburn family was murdered there; and in the woods surrounding the house, there's a solitary grave. Of course, Adrienne didn't know any of these things when she inherited Ashburn House from her Great Aunt Edith. She didn't even know Ashburn House existed. Now she's stuck in this ancient house with nothing but her cat, Wolfgang, for company, and a scant twenty dollars in her pocket. She has no WiFi, and no phone. She doesn't know anyone in town. And she's started having unsettling dreams at night about something unnatural crawling through the woods...coming for her!

My thoughts:  Adrienne seemed ill-prepared to inherit any house, let alone a haunted one. And when strange things start to happen around her, she's loath to attribute any of them to supernatural causes. Not that I blamed her. When your electricity keeps going out, your first assumption is that there's a problem with your fuse box, not that you have a ghost. And she doesn't have a lot of clues to suggest otherwise. That's one of the flaws with this book--there aren't enough clues to help the protagonist or the reader figure out the mystery. And the suspense in this one builds very slowly. It's not until the last hundred pages that things get really eerie and intense. There are a few good scares at the end, and I liked the way Coates wrapped things up, but I have to say, this isn't my favorite of her novels. Still, it's a good book for this year's R.I.P. reading challenge.

My rating:  3/5 stars.

Happy Reading!

Ghostly suspense...

"Somebody's living in this house. I heard them earlier. Whispering. When I turned round there was no one there. But there was still whispering."

Lieutenant Dominic Lancaster and his younger sister, Octavia, are sent to their family's summer home near Ullswater to escape the London blitz. Dominic is still recovering from losing his left leg in the war; Octavia is almost completely deaf. They're supposed to be safe in the England countryside, but Hallinhag House is not the sanctuary they hoped it would be.

"The house seems more than quiet. Downcast ... It's full of forgettings ... When I have been here before, the house has seemed filled with light; but that was always the summer, and it is winter now. Perhaps the house has picked up my mood, sensed my new vulnerability, and knows how useless I am. Can houses sense what we feel? Do they feed off all the emotions that have been experienced between their walls? Octavia says there are ghosts here. I admonish her, and I watch her when she comes to this room. She might be serious, but I doubt it. She has no names for these ghosts. Maybe they are silent, like her. 

Told in diary form, Jonathan Aycliffe's The Silence of Ghosts is a quiet tale of Gothic suspense. The house affects Octavia first, but Dominic is not immune. Neither is his nurse, Rose. They all see the children, but it's Octavia that the ghosts want.

I love a good ghost story, especially one set in a house with a mysterious past like Hallinhag House. And while this particular novel isn't the best ghostly tale I've read, it's pretty good. I liked the World War II setting, and the romance between Dominic and Rose. Octavia is a spunky and fun character. And the history of Hallinhag House is unexpected ... and a bit unsettling. All of which makes The Silence of Ghosts a nicely eerie, not too scary, read.  (Though I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending.)

Happy Reading!

Similar Reads:

     The Silence by Sarah Rayne

     The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

     The Fate of Mercy Alban by Wendy Webb

     The Poisoned House by Michael Ford