98 books like A Remembrance of Ghosts

Walking an empty stretch of New Jersey highway on an autumn night, a lonely gay teenaged boy meets a strange and beautiful guy who turns out to be a local legend who has haunted that stretch of road for decades. At the heart of this superb coming-of-age tale is the remarkable portrayal of the friendships of a group of Goth teens. This is an extraordinary, moving ghost story that will engage both young readers and adults. 

First of all, the title. Intriguing, original, enigmatic. That is what first drew me to this book. I had to find out more about it.

This book is much more in the style of traditional ghost stories, which I love. A spooky, desolate setting in an old house with a long history. I love the build-up of suspense, the remote location adding to the sense of isolation and helplessness, everything cold, chilly. 

The ghostly happenings, whilst perhaps not original, are very well done, which is just fine with me. Traditional ghost stories are meant to have certain elements that are standard, just as fantasy stories must have certain magical aspects. As far as ghost stories are concerned, as long as they make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, I’m happy. This book does that extremely well, I thought. Absolutely dripping with spooky atmosphere.

When you’re an avid reader as a child, there are few books that leave a distinct impression—an everlasting feeling that stays with you for the rest of your life. After all, how can one book stand out among one hundred? Well, Wait Till Helen Comes was one of those books for me.

Hahn is a master storyteller, weaving in the chilling elements that seem to jump off the page and into the comfort of your reading chair. It’s a heartbreaking story about two stepsisters, one who befriends a ghost who lures children into her pond to drown. Full of manipulation and jealousy, this is a ghost story that absolutely will not let you go.  

A string of supernatural events occurs when a gay writer moves into a house in the San Diego mountains built by a legendary film star of the 1930s. But the writer is not alone at the house—he has invited his close friends for a housewarming—and they soon discover the deceased actor had some nasty habits and a gruesome behavior. The investigations and resolutions of this absorbing novel unveil some shocking and grisly details, but there is a masterful balance of comedy along with the horror.

I enjoyed the sassy main character, Pepper, who suddenly acquires the ability to interact with the dead. The first book in a series, her current project, an entertaining mafia don, tasks her to solve his thirty-year-old murder. His persistence made me chuckle at his refusal to leave until Pepper helped him. While struggling with life in general, mainly rich girl turned pauper, she finds herself in sticky situations. Her job as a cemetery tour guide adds its own comedy to the story.

This book is a unique take on the haunted house trope that is just so striking. It has genuinely frightening scenes that don’t depend on anything but tension and careful pacing.

Sarah Waters’ writing is always a gut-punch of beauty but this novel, in particular, has roamed around my head for years. It’s so masterfully written. I feel like I’ve seen the house, lived in it, loved it just like the protagonist. 

I loved Ghost Planet for its fascinating premise delivered with a zinger.

Colonists of a newly discovered planet are being stalked by doppelgängers of dead people they once knew. Psychologist Elizabeth Cole goes to the planet for a job and immediately bonds with her supervisor, the creator of the Ghost Protocol, which forbids acknowledging or interacting with the ghosts (in an attempt to get rid of them).

And then Elizabeth discovers she, too, is a ghost, having died on arrival to the planet when her ship crashed. It’s been seven years since I read this book, and the plot has stayed with me.

Terry Pratchett’s character Tiffany Aching grows, over the series of books she stars in, into the sort of person I long to be (culminating, for me in I Shall Wear Midnight). It’s not so much that I want to be a teenaged witch in a made-up land. No, it’s Terry Pratchett’s best thoughts that I want to occupy and absorb, the grace and rage and clarity he gives his main character to “open her eyes, and then open them again.” All of Pratchett’s wise and wily witches contribute their gifts to Tiffany until she has the best of each of them: bawdy humor, strict necessity, duty, dancing, power, and humanity.

Actually, two novellas, it’s the first, "Morpho Eugenia," that’s always stayed in my mind. I loved how it handles discussions on such subjects as teleology, determinism/personal freedom, the nature of life after death, and so on, the post-On the Origin of the Species mindset.

I particularly like the ending, which, if you’re reasonably alert, you’ll work out well before our protagonist. I don’t think this is a weakness; observing the main character, Adamson (note the surname), flailing towards an inevitable ‘reveal’ is part of the book’s point, I think.

The prose imitates Victorian literature, very post-Modern, but don’t let that put you off. I found its style immersive, making me feel closer to the time.

Barbara Erskine is the queen of time slip romance novels. Almost all the books she writes feature this literary device, and cover periods of history from ancient Egypt to World War 1. Midnight is a Lonely Place was the first of her novels that I read, many years ago, and was hooked on this genre from then on. I had never come across this type of story before, blending history with the present and giving it a supernatural twist, not just ghosts haunting the protagonists, but the two interacting and incorporating romance too. This book takes us back to Roman Essex and a love triangle between Marcus Severus Secundus, his wife, Claudia, and Nion, a Druid prince. When a Roman grave is disturbed, Kate, a modern-day writer, is pulled into the cycle of jealousy and vengeance they have played out over two thousand years. 

All of Erskine’s books are well… show more.