ghost stories

The Little Stranger follows Faraday, a respectable country doctor in post-World War II England who is called to assist the Ayres family—an aristocratic family whose once elegant home, Hundreds Hall, has fallen into disrepair as their power and wealth dwindle with the collapsing noble class. His patient, Roderick, lives there with his mother and sister as they all wage daily battles to prevent the inevitable loss of their formerly prosperous country estate. Roderick was wounded in the second World War and has never recovered—but his injuries are not all that plague him. The entire family is

Lara Lington fights going to her 105 year old great-aunt Sadie's funeral. Her life seems to be at a very low point and she just doesn't have the energy to attend the funeral of one she barely knows. She relents and goes, but shortly into the service she starts to see and hear her dead Aunt.  She is sure she is cracking up, when Sadie starts requesting Lara to follow her and help her find her necklace.  She has no time to follow a ghost around.  After all, she has to mend her failing business, and get her boyfriend back.  

Twenties Girl by Sophia Kinsella is a fun, enjoyable read.  If you like

"After their English aunt dies, listless American twins Julia and Valentina travel to London to live in their aunt's now empty flat overlooking Highgate Cemetery. There they become embroiled in the day-to-day sagas of their eccentric neighbors. But soon they discover that something is alive in Highgate--something unable to move on."

A haunted, aging apartment in north London, bordering one of the most famous cemeteries in the world, complete with an unusual set of inhabitants and a bit of London's darker history sprinkled throughout . . . no one had to convince me to pick this one up. 

Un

Zach, Poppy and Alice are at an age where they should be putting away such things as dolls. At least this is what everyone keeps telling them. By using their action figures, Barbies and dolls they have purchased from Goodwill, they have created their own unique fantasy world of pirates, ladies and one bone-china doll they have dubbed Queen. To save their friendship, Poppy takes Queen out of her mother's cabinet and strange things begin to happen. Queen convinces them to undertake their own quest where they take a bus trip, sail a sailboat and break into a library, all to fulfill what they

A good ghost story works beneath the surface of our attention, shifting it now and again to a telling plot insight and then letting it sink back into eerie atmosphere. In the recently republished novella Mrs. God, author Peter Straub so masterfully submerges our attention into the uncanny that we cannot see the direction of our journey, or even better, where we had been led. The journey begins with English professor William Standish having been invited to spend three weeks at the Esswood House, a mysterious English manor whose library contains early poems of his grandfather’s first wife. On

In her second installment in the Anna Dressed in Blood series, Kendare Blake hits the reader’s full force with instant action, gore, and sadly death. Girl of Nightmares begins shortly after the events of Anna Dressed in Blood, with Cas trying to figure out how to save Anna from hell, all the while having gruesome visions of her that almost cost him, and his friends, their lives on more than one occasion. Unable to cope with knowing that Anna is suffering, Cass decides to break all of the rules of ghost hunting to travel to hell and save her. This takes Cas deep into underground London and into

A ghost story, this is considered by many to be the best in modern time. Written in 1983, made into a successful stage play in 1989, and soon to be a major motion picture, this atmospheric tale is set in the stormy moors on the coast of England where the fog is so dense one can become lost in an instant. Arthur Kipps, attorney, is sent by his firm to settle the Drablow estate following the death of the last family member, Alice. He decides to stay in her isolated home for a few days to complete his work. This turns out to be a bad decision. At Alice’s funeral he sees an ethereal woman, dressed

Sometimes, as a book reviewer, it's best to just get out of the way as quickly as possible. Such is the case with this review of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, one of the great ghost novels in the English language.

I want to quote from the book because the opening is, in my opinion, one of the finest passages in the history of supernatural fiction. Before I do, I'll just say this: Shirley Jackson was a brilliant writer and conceptualist, reading any of her books is like being hypnotized, and furthermore, she stands up to multiple readings.

Now on to that opening paragraph, which