Why am I passionate about this?
I write adventure and mystery stories for children aged 9 - 13, involving battles with mythical creatures, dangerous pacts with demons, and other supernatural chills. My first book, Ante’s Inferno, won the People’s Book Prize and a Silver Wishing Shelf Award. For The Fall of a Sparrow, I drew on my love of ghost stories, not just for their scariness but also for their emotional complexity: ghosts don’t haunt just for the sake of it. They need something only the main character can give. Friendship, perhaps, a companion in their loneliness… or something much darker. Here’s my choice of classic stories in which ghosts pursue a wide – and sometimes terrifying – variety of agendas.
Griselda's book list on ghost stories
Why did Griselda love this book?
A delightful, bonkers story in which 12-year-old Alex MacBuff, Laird of ancient Castle Carra, is not so much haunted by a motley collection of ghosts as brought up by them from babyhood. For battle-hardened Krok the Viking, heartbroken Victorian governess Miss Spinks, spoilt 5-year-old poltergeist Flossie, retired vampire Stanislaus and failed Hellhound Cyril, Alex is the centre of their world, and they will do anything to help him. Anything, that is, except stop haunting the crumbling, much-loved but unaffordable Castle Carra that Alex needs to sell to Texan billionaire Hiram Hopgood. Which is awkward… as a ghost-free castle is part of the deal.
1 author picked The Haunting of Hiram as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 8, 9, 10, and 11.
'I will buy your castle,' declared Hiram C. Hopgood. 'But only if there are no ghosts!'
Alex MacBuff can't afford to keep his beloved Castle Carra, and an American millionaire has made him an offer he can't refuse. The castle is shipped all the way to Texas, but its ghostly inhabitants, including Krok the Viking warrior and a hell-hound called Cyril, follow their home across the Atlantic. How can Alex stop them haunting Hiram and also save the millionaire's daughter from an evil ransom plot?
The Haunting of Hiram is a wonderfully spooky young-fiction title from the award-winning author of…