Posts tagged with ghosts
No, thank you
In honor of Halloween, I've been reading several article about The Haunting of Hill House, Netflix's miniseries adaptation of Shirley Jackson's novel. I'm way too much of a chicken to actually watch the series (even still shots give me the heebie-jeebies), but...
Edward Gorey-esque
io9 recently featured a bunch of pages from Brian Coldrick's new book Behind You, a collection of fragmentary, single-page ghost stories. I usually prefer anything I read to come with a plot pay-off, but I actually love this idea: it blends Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick with...
I think not.
Just what the world needs: more grim Scandinavian horror! The trailer is out for the Icelandic film I Remember You. The movie is based on a best-selling ghost story of the same name by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, described as "The Queen of Icelandic Crime"...
All kinds of no.
Okay, this looks CREEPY AS HELL. There's an upcoming movie adaptation of Silvio Raffo’s mystery novel Voice from the Stone, which Entertainment Weekly describes as "a haunted house tale and a powerful meditation on grief, all in one." If the trailer is accurate...
The Dead Seekers, by Barb and J.C. Hendee
Barb and J.C. Hendee's new novel The Dead Seekers has a very specific target audience: people hoping for a serious take on movies like Van Helsing or Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. Set in the same world as the Hendees' best-selling Noble Dead series, The Dead Seekers features a vaguely Eastern European setting, loads of ghosts, and two gloomy protagonists—Tris, an uptight ghost-slayer for hire, and Mari, a young woman determined to avenge her murdered family...
The Creeping Shadow, by Jonathan Stroud
In The Creeping Shadow, the fourth book in Jonathan Stroud's spine-tingling Lockwood and Co. series, the heroine has left her friends at the Lockwood and Co. ghost-hunting agency. Lucy is now a freelance Listener, hiring herself out to the big London agencies. But when her former teammates request her help with the ghost...
Famous Last Words, by Katie Alender
According to her author bio, Katie Alender went to film school, and her love of movies permeates every page of Famous Last Words. I expect there's already a film-adaptation deal in the works, but if not, Hollywood is missing out, because Famous Last Words has everything: ghosts, romance, murders... even a makeover scene. Seriously, it's practically a shopping list for a great teen movie...
The Whispering Skull, by Jonathan Stroud
The Whispering Skull, the second book in Jonathan Stroud's Lockwood & Co. series, is just as complex, entertaining, and ghost-stuffed as its predecessor. It has the same faults, too, but they remain happily minor...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Screaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud
This week's Book Giveaway is Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud, which I reviewed here. I'll post our take on the sequel, The Whispering Skull, later today, but my hopes are high—Mr. Stroud nearly always delivers the goods, and a clever, witty ghost story sounds like the perfect way to ease into fall...
Revenant, by Kat Richardson
After nine books, Kat Richardson has finally brought her Greywalker series to a close, and she's ending the way she began: Revenant is carefully researched, densely plotted, and—it must be said—works much better on an intellectual level than an emotional one...
Sparrow Hill Road, by Seanan McGuire
Seanan McGuire's Sparrow Hill Road began life as a series of short stories published on The Edge of Propinquity. The author reworked the material into a single novel, mashing it into one mega ghost story, with enough free-ranging creepiness to fuel a dozen camp outs...
Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud
Jonathan Stroud's novel Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase has a surprising amount in common with the Travel Channel series Ghost Adventures. Sure, The Screaming Staircase is the product of an award-winning, New York Times best-selling author, while Ghost Adventures is a ridiculous show about a bunch of shrieking dudebros racing around and swearing at (allegedly) mysterious noises, but both center around...
Possession, by Kat Richardson
Possession, the eighth installment in Kat Richardson's Greywalker series, continues the author's hot streak of coming up with deliciously creepy stories inspired by horrific episodes in Seattle's past. I have read and enjoyed every one of these books, and Possession is no exception—but Richardson's limitations as a writer are definitely becoming more apparent...
Ruined and Unbroken, by Paula Morris
After reading Paula Morris's novel Dark Souls earlier this spring, I decided to hunt down the two books in her earlier series, Ruined and Unbroken. Dark Souls had some shaky characterization, but Morris's plot was creative, creepy, and rich in historical detail (all things I approve of in a ghost story), so my hopes were high...
School Spirits, by Rachel Hawkins
Slightly more than a year after releasing Spell Bound, the (totally disappointing, it must be said) conclusion to her Hex Hall series, Rachel Hawkins has returned to familiar territory in School Spirits, the first book in a Hex Hall spin-off series devoted to a different branch of the monster-hunting Brannick family...