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I’ve always had a fascination with the past and how it interacts with the present. I grew up playing in the house and grounds of a spooky old house that was a convalescent home for World War One soldiers and had stood there for centuries before that. At university my essays always strayed into the supernatural. I studied time slips and gothic fiction in English Literature and my history dissertation was about people who believed their children were fairy changelings. When I’m not combining my passion for historical mysteries and ghostly goings on in my writing, I collect old postcards and explore crumbling cemeteries for inspiration.
This is a brilliantly written fast-paced time travel adventure, mystery, and romance, all rolled into one. Conway’s descriptive writing style brings the characters and settings of 1912 and present-day vividly to life. The history field trip scene reminded me so much of my own university field trip to a local cemetery that I wondered if we’d been on the same course. However, this story is set in Birmingham rather than Liverpool, but the similarities were uncanny.
The author has really done his research too, but where a less skilled author might inform the reader through info-dumping, Conway conveys the sights, sounds, and historical details of Edwardian Moseley through action and dialogue. You feel as though you have travelled back in time with Rachel and Danny and are experiencing the story with them. There are so many twists and turns and unexpected reveals that you can’t help but keep reading. But…
One touch... and you're who knows when? A brilliant paranormal mystery that launches this bestselling saga with an Edwardian thriller that blends science fiction with historical adventure. 2018 UPDATED AND EXPANDED EDITION.
In a small corner of Birmingham, England, a pair of mismatched History students from opposite sides of the tracks find their lives thrown together when an old gravestone catapults them back into their neighbourhood’s dark Edwardian past, where they have just three days to prevent the murder of a teenage girl.
In 1912, they find that every action has an unforeseen consequence that can ripple through generations... and…
I’ve always had a fascination with the past and how it interacts with the present. I grew up playing in the house and grounds of a spooky old house that was a convalescent home for World War One soldiers and had stood there for centuries before that. At university my essays always strayed into the supernatural. I studied time slips and gothic fiction in English Literature and my history dissertation was about people who believed their children were fairy changelings. When I’m not combining my passion for historical mysteries and ghostly goings on in my writing, I collect old postcards and explore crumbling cemeteries for inspiration.
This is Taylor’s debut novel and like my book, the time slip element takes us back to World War 1 in 1916. Louisa is admitted to Coldbrook Hall Psychiatric hospital after an accident in which she is believed to have tried to commit suicide. Whilst there she slips back to her days at a hospital treating wounded soldiers and falls in love with Robert Lovett. Not only must she find a way to remain with him, but she must find him when he is taken prisoner on the Western Front. The detailed descriptions of life in the trenches really brought the horrors of WW1 to life. Taylor has researched this area thoroughly and her vivid writing style allows the reader to experience the cold, muddy, and rat-infested conditions for themselves.
The author’s observations on everyday life during the war add interest and are sometimes surprising, for instance, the fact that…
*Shortlisted for the Eharmony/Orion Love Story Prize
*Longlisted for the Exeter Novel Prize
A strange twist of fate connects a British soldier fighting in the First World War in 1916 and a young woman living in modern-day England a century later, in this haunting, literary time travel novel.
Two people, two battles: one against the invading Germans on the battlefields of 1916 France, the other against a substandard, uncaring mental health facility in modern-day England. Part war story, part timeslip, part love story – and at the same time a meditation on the themes of war, mental illness, identity and…
I’ve always had a fascination with the past and how it interacts with the present. I grew up playing in the house and grounds of a spooky old house that was a convalescent home for World War One soldiers and had stood there for centuries before that. At university my essays always strayed into the supernatural. I studied time slips and gothic fiction in English Literature and my history dissertation was about people who believed their children were fairy changelings. When I’m not combining my passion for historical mysteries and ghostly goings on in my writing, I collect old postcards and explore crumbling cemeteries for inspiration.
Highgate Cemetery is a place I have always wanted to visit, and through this book you get to see it in its newly built Victorian splendour, and its wild and overgrown beauty of today, making this a must-read novel for me.
This standalone novel combines a Victorian mystery with a modern-day murder mystery and a real-life incident that occurred at Highgate in 1970 which was reported in both newspapers and on television at the time – The Highgate Vampire. All of the reports the author uses in the book can be found in contemporary newspapers of the time. There are even Facebook groups devoted to discussing the event. Having read about The Highgate Vampire from the reports of those involved I was intrigued to see how Morris would incorporate this event into her time slip.
It is very unusual for an author to use an event that occurred within living…
Something is astir in Highgate Cemetery. The dead want justice and so do the living.
January 1870: Isabelle Hart has a secret. It lies buried in Highgate Cemetery, beside the statue of the sleeping angel. The enigmatic medium, Madeleine Fox, seems to offer Isabelle hope, but is it all a terrible lie?
March 1970: Strange happenings of a sinister nature are reported at Highgate Cemetery. Who or what is lurking amongst the gravestones? A teenager discovers an obsession that will consume him for the rest of his life.
July, present day: Lauren reluctantly participates in a séance only to discover…
I’ve always had a fascination with the past and how it interacts with the present. I grew up playing in the house and grounds of a spooky old house that was a convalescent home for World War One soldiers and had stood there for centuries before that. At university my essays always strayed into the supernatural. I studied time slips and gothic fiction in English Literature and my history dissertation was about people who believed their children were fairy changelings. When I’m not combining my passion for historical mysteries and ghostly goings on in my writing, I collect old postcards and explore crumbling cemeteries for inspiration.
Although this is a story aimed at younger readers, Allie, the main character is about to turn twelve years old, but don't let that stop you from reading it if you're an adult. The author tells her story skillfully and anyone old enough to remember the heatwave of 1976 will find themselves transported back to that year whilst reading this book. It's also nice to be reminded of a time before everyone had smartphones, computers, and access to the internet, where finding out how to do things and researching the history of your house wasn't just a few clicks away.
Dialogue is expertly handled with true-to-life characterisation and there are beautiful, evocative, almost poetic descriptions. The author has a knack for choosing words that convey exactly the image and feeling she wants the reader to experience. All of the senses are used to brilliant effect and plunge the reader into…
Welcome to the golden summer of 1976. Year of the Heatwave, year of the Drought.
Normally sun-starved and grey, England is plagued by endless blue skies – no rain for months, the country scorched and parched, standpipes in the street.
But 12-year-old Allie has other worries. When her family moves to ancient, ramshackle Priory Farm – far away from her friends and everything she has ever known…
Then she discovers a doorway into history – and her adventures begin. What secrets will Priory Farm reveal?
An exciting timeslip adventure by the author of 'The Order of the White Boar' sequence,…
All the best books have a cat sidekick. Over and over, when people talk to me about my book, they pause in the middle of whatever they were about to say and go, “Oh my gosh, Biscuits,” and then launch into a list of things Biscuits the cat does, and how they are similar to things their cats have done, presumably up to and including throwing hands (paws?) with horrifying monsters that want to eat your heart. Biscuits is the latest in a long and proud tradition of literary feline companions, an essential element of many of my favorite and formative texts growing up.
Mr. Cat is a ride-or-die. Mr. Cat walks the line that all cats do in the real world, in that he doesn’t actually have magic powers and he can’t actually talk, he is at the end of the day a little animal that lives in Jenny’s house, but also he would bite a ghost without hesitation. It’s Peter S. Beagle’s complete mastery of voice and tone that enable Jenny and Mr. Cat to walk that line so effortlessly. Because the fantastical is grounded so deeply in the real world, the stakes feel so high that I first read this book in one breathless sitting, afraid to look away.
Arriving in the English countryside to live with her mother and new stepfather, Jenny has no interest in her surroundings until she meets Tamsin. Since her death over 300 years ago, Tamsin has haunted the lonely estate without rest, trapped by a hidden trauma she can't remember, and a powerful evil even the spirits of night cannot name. To help her, Jenny must delve deeper into the dark world than any human has in hundreds of years, and face danger that will change her life forever.
I’ve written and published one hundred very short ghost stories, plus a handful of longer ones, and have spent a lifetime reading and watching and thinking about stories of ghosts and the afterlife. My expertise, such as it is, involves ghosts as beings of narrative and metaphor. I’ve encountered great numbers of them on the page and on the screen—nowhere else—but I confess that I would love someday (though don’t expect) to encounter them in the flesh. My flesh, that is to say; their fleshlessness.
Aira is one of the most interesting novelists alive today, a writer whose wit, energy, and unfailingly restless imagination ensure that his books never follow a straightforward path, and thus always surprise you. Ghosts, my favorite of those books, presents the story of a half-constructed luxury apartment complex, the ghosts who wander its beams and its floors, and the adolescent girl to whom they call. Recommended if you like your ghosts circumambulating and avant-garde.
"On a building site of a new, luxury apartment building, visitors looked up at the strange, irregular form of the water tank that crowned the edifice, and the big parabolic dish that would supply television images to all the floors. On the edge of the dish, a sharp metallic edge on which no bird would have dared to perch, three completely naked men were sitting, with their faces turned up to the midday sun; no one saw them, of course." - from Ghosts
Ghosts is about a construction worker's family squatting on a building site. They all see large and…
I believe with all of my heart that each one of us was created with two achingly powerful inner drives: 1) the longing for new worlds and 2) the desperate urge to do something meaningful. I simply could never believe that human beings are all simply cosmic accidents produced by some sort of cosmic casino. I believe God created people and gave us each an instinct to seek our true home. The books I write—all 22 of them—are tales of flawed individuals, thrown into unexpected, life-changing events, and given the chance to journey through many astoundingly lush worlds, all in an effort to do the seemingly impossible.
Imagine a contemporary fantasy, driven by sword-wielding, swashbuckling, mystically empowered, ghostbusting teenagers. Yup. That is the cool twist in Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood & Co. Series.
He’s best known for the Bartimaeus Trilogy, and takes all of his fantasy worldbuilding craft to design a modern world where ghosts are not only real but common and quite deadly to us living folk. You will fall in love with Lockwood and Lucy, sense the tension between them, and yet be relieved to discover that their connection isn’t the predictable stuff of typical teen romance.
The remarkable ghosts are similar to fantasy races. Rather than elves, gnomes, warlocks, etc., you have screamers, wailers, howling maids, and a whole host of specific ghost types that I dare not spoil. If you like fantasy with a touch of creepy, you’ll love Lockwood & Co.
A sinister Problem has occurred in London: all nature of ghosts, haunts, spirits, and specters are appearing throughout the city, and they aren't exactly friendly. Only young people have the psychic abilities required to see-and eradicate-these supernatural foes. Many different Psychic Detection Agencies have cropped up to handle the dangerous work, and they are in fierce competition for business.
In The Screaming Staircase, the plucky and talented Lucy Carlyle teams up with Anthony Lockwood, the charismatic leader of Lockwood & Co, a small agency that runs independent of any adult supervision. After an assignment…
During the years that I have been writing ghost stories, many of them collected in The Haunted Heart and Other Tales, I have read a variety of classic and contemporary ghost stories, horror anthologies, and novels that included gay characters, written by authors who are also openly gay or whose legacy has identified the writer as homosexual. While there are a number of short stories that are personal favorites, this list focuses on novels.
Instead of rehab, a gay college student chooses to recuperate at his grandmother’s home in rural Alabama near the ruins of a plantation. But these rural backwoods aren’t a safe haven—there’s a meth lab nearby and the history of the county is written in bad blood. This is a Southern Gothic gem, an expertly written mystery of the unraveling truths behind mysterious apparitions and a family’s dark secrets.
After landing in the hospital after a bad breakup and an ensuing drug-and-alcohol binge, college student Jake Chapman is given two options: rehab, or spend the summer at his dying grandmother’s decaying home in rural Alabama. The choice is obvious.
His grandmother’s land has been in Jake’s family since the early nineteenth century; the ruins of the old plantation house are a short walk through the woods behind her home. An archaeological team is excavating the ruins, looking for evidence to prove an old family legend—and there’s a meth lab just over the ridge.
Born in Poland, I have fond memories of sitting on my Grandma’s lap listening to stories and poems. A favorite poem was about a crow who ate Swiss cheese and only left the holes. The concept made my noggin spin and spurred my imagination. When I immigrated to the U.S. at age seven, I learned English by reading a Mother Goose collection. Captivated by the fun rhyming sounds and art, I dreamed of making children’s books someday. Years later, my dream came true, I became an author/illustrator, with the majority of my books being extensions of the nursery rhymes which inspired me when I was a child.
This book features the cutest little ghost, who goes out to frighten someone with her Boo. But, unfortunately, she loses her Boo. Boohoo, what will she do? There are plenty of “oo” sounds in the verses, which could help early readers. The surprise ending engages the reader as well. It’s a very sweet story with lovely illustrations and is not at all scary, Little ones are sure to giggle and participate in making the numerous “oo” sounds.
'I've lost my boo! I've lost my boo!Where has it gone? What will I do?'Little Ghost has lost her boo, but she is determined to get it back, so she heads out to look for it. On her night-time hunt she meets a number of her friends, Owl, Pigeon, Rooster and Cow, and asks each of them if they've heard her boo. None of them have but they are all very kind and offer Little Ghost their own sound instead. But none are as good as her own scary boo so she keeps on looking. In the end, it's the…
I’m Catherine Cavendish – writer of Gothic and ghostly horror stories. I lived in a haunted house. It didn’t scare me because our ghost seemed to go out of her way to make us welcome. Elsewhere in the building was a different matter. This was occupied by a social club and in one room in particular, an entity targeted lone females, taking delight in poking and shoving them. Since we left there, I wonder about our friendly ghost. Does she continue to watch over her old home? As for the malevolent spirit – one encounter was quite enough for me! My experiences left me fascinated by the power of buildings to absorb its ghosts.
Eel Marsh House. The name itself sets you up for something dark, sinister, cold, lonely, and hide-under-the-bedcovers scary.
The way Susan Hill handles her brand of horror has always fascinated and grabbed me. She sets her Gothic and ghostly stories – which are mostly novella length – in an indeterminate timeline which has been called ‘Hill-time’ and this all adds to the mystery and ethereal darkness.
The Woman in Black is her most famous (writing in this genre) and has all the ingredients you want. An isolated house with such a macabre back story it’s no wonder it is so deeply haunted, a desolate fog-ridden landscape, the hapless and grieving solicitor who stays there in order to sort out the legal affairs of the late owner.
Add all this to the tragic legend that has the locals fearful and wary and it’s classic stuff – but no less gripping when…
The classic ghost story from the author of The Mist in the Mirror: a chilling tale about a menacing spectre haunting a small English town.
Arthur Kipps is an up-and-coming London solicitor who is sent to Crythin Gifford—a faraway town in the windswept salt marshes beyond Nine Lives Causeway—to attend the funeral and settle the affairs of a client, Mrs. Alice Drablow of Eel Marsh House. Mrs. Drablow’s house stands at the end of the causeway, wreathed in fog and mystery, but Kipps is unaware of the tragic secrets that lie hidden behind its sheltered windows. The routine business trip…
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