The Paranormal Ranger by Stanley Milford Jr.

 "As interesting as the paranormal may be, sometimes there is simply a logical explanation for the phenomena that people encounter. My job as a Navajo Ranger--even as The Paranormal Ranger--wasn't to prove that the paranormal was out there. It was simply to investigate the cases that came my way and do my best to find the truth. ... I truly did try to be like Sherlock Holmes when I investigated these cases, taking nothing for granted and doing my best to solve the puzzle. It was just as satisfying when that puzzle turned out to have a mundane cause as a paranormal one. The important thing was finding the truth."

"While, as an investigator, I would prefer to always have evidence and answers, my experiences with the paranormal have taught me to coexist with mystery when I must." 

This was my nonfiction book for the month of October, and it was an interesting one. Stanley Milford is part Cherokee, Part Irish, and half Navajo. Growing up, he spent every summer in the Navajo Nation with his father and grandparents learning the stories, traditions and beliefs of the Navajo. When he grew up, he became a Navajo Ranger, a law enforcement branch that patrols the vast, remote  regions of the Navajo Nation protecting ruin sites and archaeological artifacts, dealing with fish, game and livestock, and enforcing the laws. But his job also came to include investigating paranormal activity such as Bigfoot and UFO sightings, Skinwalkers, witch curses, and even ghostly hauntings. It was a fascinating look at his many strange encounters over the years as a Navajo Ranger. I enjoyed the way he writes and really appreciated his outlook on life. 

"For me, paranormal investigation is less about what's Out There than what's right here in front of us:  a chance to connect with and help one another and to do our very best to make our world a better, kinder place than it was the day before."

Happy Reading!

 

 

Two favorite ghostly series...

 

The Haunted Child by Dawn Merriman

Rylan Flynn nearly drowned when she was a kid, and ever since her near-death experience she's been able to see and talk to ghosts. This time she's hoping the dead can help her solve a murder. I really like this series. Rylan's a fun character, though she was a little stubborn and reckless at times in this one. Still, her interactions with all the different ghosts are always great. It's the living she has to watch out for. I've read four books in this series so far and enjoyed them all. They're fast and fun paranormal mysteries.  ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Fallen Wishes by J.L. Bryan

Ellie Jordan is a ghost hunter, investigating hauntings and trapping troublesome spirits. She's been hired by a young widow to find out the truth behind the entities stalking the ruins and gardens of a large plantation outside Charleston, South Carolina where the long-buried secrets are dark and terrifying. This is another fun one from J.L. Bryan. I love this series and always enjoy Ellie's suspenseful ghost adventures. And this one is a great October read even if it's summertime for Ellie and Stacey, her partner in ghosthunting.  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Happy Reading!

Two quick recommendations...

 

Bride by Ali Hazelwood

She's a Vampyre; he's a Were.  They're supposed to be enemies.

She's grown up without love or family. He's never found his mate.

Their arranged marriage is a political alliance. 

They're not supposed to fall in love. 

But then their worlds collide and everything changes. 

This paranormal romance is such a fun read! Misery Lark is a sympathetic and spunky character. And I loved her swoony relationship with Lowe Moreland. There's also great banter and humor.   4.5/5 stars.

Midnight Movie by J.L. Bryan

Ellie Jordan is a ghost trapper. She and her partner, Stacey, are investigating the strange paranormal phenomena happening at a local Drive-In movie theater that's being renovated. Is it being haunted by the ghost of the previous owner? A murdered actress from the old movies that they used to show there? Or something more sinister? This is another fun ghostly mystery with humor, atmosphere and a suspenseful ending. Though it's not as scary as some of his other Ellie Jordan books. Ellie and Stacey and their boyfriends, Jacob and Michael, are great characters. I really like them....and this series.    4/5 stars.

Happy Reading!

The Trailwalker by J.L. Bryan

 

The plot:  Paranormal investigator, Ellie Jordan, and her partner, Stacey, have been hired by Josh and Allison Conner to investigate the old summer camp they just purchased and hope to reopen soon. The camp has a lot of history, not all of it good. Allison is convinced the rustic lodge and cabins are haunted. Josh isn't so sure. But there's a cold mist in the attic, ghostly footsteps at night, something haunting the lake, and an old burial mound near the camp. Ellie and Stacey have their work cut out for them. First, they need to find out who or what is haunting the place, and then figure out how to lay it to rest.  

My thoughts: I love books with a summer camp setting. And a camp that's haunted, too? Even better! This is the thirteenth Ellie Jordan novel that I've read and it's another fun one in this ghost-hunting series. It reads fast. The mystery surrounding the summer camp is interesting. And there's lots of ghostly activity and good supernatural suspense. And the ending is awesome. (Just wait 'til you meet the Trailwalker!) That's what I love most about these books; they all have good endings. They've also got humor, and I really like the main characters. This one can be read as a standalone, although I do recommend checking out the first one, Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper, just because it's so good.

Happy Reading!

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

From the B Shelf...

 Author: Juliet Blackwell

Title:  Hexes and Hemlines

First lines:  "It didn't take a witch to figure out something was very, very wrong on the thirteenth floor of the Doppler Building. ... I took a deep breath and concentrated on not losing my lunch. Most days I deal in vintage clothing, not corpses. I may be a natural-born witch, but I'm no more comfortable around violent death than any other mortal merchant on Haight Street."

Hexes and Hemlines is a fun mix of witchcraft and murder mystery. Lily Ivory, who owns a vintage clothing shop called Aunt Cora's Closet, gets called in to consult on the murder of a man named Malachi Zazi, mostly because he's found surrounded by several symbols of bad luck. The detective on the case knows she's a witch and hopes she can explain what all those symbols might mean. But the more questions Lily asks, the more people keep telling her to back off--from Aiden, the powerful witch who's been training her, to Bronwyn, her close work friend, as well as another witch named Doura who threatens Lily if she doesn't leave well enough alone.

Lily leads a complicated life, and as I read this mystery I found myself wishing several times that I'd read the previous two books in this series first. It would have helped me sort out her various acquaintances and tangled relationships. But my library didn't have any copies of those books sitting on the B shelf. Only this one. And Blackwell did a pretty good job of catching me up on Lily's life. 

I thought the magic and witchcraft in this book was a lot of fun. And Lily's familiar, Oscar, made me smile. He's a goblin who pretends to be a pot-bellied pig when regular humans are around. But I felt the mystery itself got a little lost in the confusion of all the different characters. Still, I liked it. And I wouldn't mind trying another book in this paranormal mystery series at some point. 

Happy Reading!

Spine-tingling Suspense...

"Shadows were seeping out of the trees like spilled molasses, coiling through the grass and sweeping up their trunks. The deathly quiet was broken by the hum of incoherent murmurings. dozens of whispered voices swirled around him as the shadows continued their steady march towards the driveway and his only means of escape .... He sucked air audibly through his teeth as the shadows took on the shape and form of people, an eerie queue of obsidian men and women without faces. He was going to die."

The book:  Forest of Shadows by Hunter Shea

The setting:  a log cabin in Shida, Alaska, a remote village where the native Alaskans know more than they're willing to say.

The main characters:  JOHN BACKMAN, a widower, lottery winner, and paranormal hunter who lives to investigate strange phenomenom. JESSICA, John's precocious and fearless six-year-old daughter who's the first to see a ghost at the log cabin. EVE, John's sister-in-law, and her young son, LIAM. And JUDAS GRAVES, an outsider in Shida who loves to read, smoke pot, and who experienced the terror residing in the log cabin firsthand. He's the reason John's come to Alaska with his family. Then there's the rest of the town, who really don't want John and his family there.

The end result:  a creepy and entertaining supernatural mystery with murderous shadows, ghosts, buried secrets, suspense, evil, terror, revenge, love, sacrifice, and death.  Do I recommend it? Absolutely!

Happy Reading!

For more Hunter Shea reads and reviews, check out Barb's review of Antarctic Ice Beasts, and watch for her upcoming review of Shea's newest novel, Ghost Mine. She's also posted a great interview with Hunter Shea about his books, which everyone should go and read. And then go read a Hunter Shea book for yourself!

Like one of these:
The Dover Demon
Megalodon in Paradise
They Rise

Boo!

Ellie Jordan investigates ghost sightings and haunted houses for a living. In Maze of Souls, she and her assistant, Stacey, are looking into the paranormal activity at Pine Hollow Farm. And there is plenty. From a Hessian highwayman on his ghostly horse to the bloody shadow of a young girl who was killed hundreds of years ago, Ellie has her hands full. Then there are all the angry ghosts in the old family cemetery who seem determined to push the living off their land.

This is another entertaining read from J.L. Bryan. There are some good ghostly scares and I enjoyed watching Ellie figure out the farm's history and how to keep all those ghosts from terrorizing the family living there. Here are a few fun highlights:

"This house had presence, history, layers of emotional energy accumulated over the generations. In the stillness and silence of the night, the soul of the house could emerge, along with any spirits that had been dormant during the day, waiting their turn to creep out under cover of darkness."

"I had to wonder how many layers of hauntings we faced. Was the horse-mounted ghost really a Hessian soldier or somebody from later years? Was the horseman connected to the bloody girl ghost at all, or were they separated by generations? Once a place is haunted, it tends to accumulate more ghosts over the years, the energy growing denser and darker like a spiritual black hole. Nothing attracts a ghost like a haunted house."

"The pale woman surged up from the darkness. Her face was a white death mask, but her hand was gleaming blood red, droplets of gore hanging from her long fingernails. I had a good look at those as they swiped at my face ... The air was instantly ice-cold all around me. I screamed and leaped back from the bed..."

Happy Reading!

Other J.L Bryan books I've enjoyed:

Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper

Cold Shadows

A haunting tale...

Title & Author:  The House Next Door by Darcy Coates
Genre:  Paranormal
First line:  I live next to a haunted house.

Summary:  Jo has never been inside Marwick House; her cats won't even enter its yard. And she's never met any of its occupants either, mostly because none of them stay for very long. Until Anna moves in. She seems nice, and a little fragile, and Jo tries to warn her that sometimes strange things happen in Marwick House, but Anna doesn't seem to mind. Not even when she sees the ghost of Helen Marwick who died a very unhappy death there years ago. But things change when Helen starts to make her presence known.

My thoughts:  I love novels about haunted houses and Darcy Coates writes some good ones. At first, Marwick House seems fairly benign. There's a little ghostly activity here and there--flickering lights, doors that open and close, haunting piano music in the hall--but it's not until the second half of the book that things ramp up and start to get really suspenseful and scary. I was intrigued by Marwick House itself, and I liked the quiet build up at the first, and how I almost felt sorry for Helen. Jo and Anna were a little too passive at times for me to really like them, but Jo made up for it at the end. And what an ending! Although I thought the The Carrow Haunt was better, I liked this ghostly tale enough to give it 3.5/5 stars.

Happy Reading!

Urban Fantasy Fun...

The Who:  

Barbara Yager -- one of the Baba Yagas. (It's a title, not a name.) She rides a motorcycle; she can heal and do magic; and she can kick some serious ass. She's been summoned to Clearwater County to help find a missing girl.

Liam McClellean -- the small town sheriff who is leading the investigation into the recent disappearances of three young children. He's doing everything he can, but there are no leads and no clues. Then Barbara Yager shows up out of nowhere and not only is she beautiful, she's also stubborn, odd, mysterious, and infuriating. And Liam is not quite sure what to make of her.

The What:   

Barbara is sure there's Otherworldly magic behind the children's disappearances, but she doesn't know why, or who's responsible. Although she does have a suspect. Now if only she had some proof to go along with her suspicions,  and a way to counter the spell and recover the missing children. Then there's Liam. He's determined and sincere and not entirely sure he can trust her.  And she wants to tell him the truth about who she is and what's really going on in his town, she's just not sure how to do it so he'll believe her. But she's got to figure it out fast, because they're running out of time.

The Fun:  

Wickedly Dangerous by Deborah Blake is an entertaining mix of mystery, magic, and mayhem, with just the right amount of romance. Liam and Barbara are great characters, but I also really liked Chudo Yudo, the dragon disguised as a dog who lives with Barbara and guards the Water of Life & Death. (Not only does he read historical romances, but he finds Barbara's attraction to Liam--a first for her--very amusing.) There's great magic in this book, too:  rusalkas, and spells, and a hidden door to the Otherworld. It's a good escapism book and a fun fantasy read. I liked it a lot.

Happy Reading!