Tag Archives: Ghosts

So Cold the River

TitleSo Cold the River

Author:  Michael Koryta

Publisher: Little, Brown, and Company, June 2010

Summary: Once a highly sought after cinematographer, Eric Shaw’s film career is in a downward spiral. He shouldn’t be surprised-punching a famous director in the face will often have that effect. Eric’s personal life isn’t faring much better. He walked out on his wife Claire when he began to feel that she and her father were starting to think of him as a failure. Eric’s gift has always been his innate sense of knowing which pictures or footage would move the audience. His new career is using that gift to make personal memorial videos for funerals, weddings, and other occasions. When the sister of a woman memorialized in one of his videos offers to hire Eric to make a video about her dying father in law, Campbell Bradford, Eric agrees. Armed with his camera and a curious bottle of vintage mineral water that belonged to Bradford, Eric travels to French Lick, Indiana, to begin his project. What he finds there contradicts all he was previously told about Campbell Bradford. This and the fact that the bottle of mineral water he’s been carrying around keeps getting colder and colder to the touch, even as the temperature around him rises, should have been enough to convince Eric that he was heading toward danger. But, alas, Eric plunges ahead and ends up in a fight to save his life and his very soul. This is a fast paced, action packed supernatural thriller with great characters and a very clever plot. I enjoyed this from cover to cover.

Who will like this book? Supernatural and thriller readers.

Recommended by: Sue, Circulation Coordinator

The Tale of Halcyon Crane

TitleThe Tale of Halcyon Crane

Author:  Wendy Webb

Publisher: Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.,  March 2010

Summary: Hallie James has lived her life believing that her mother Madlyn was killed in a fire when Hallie was a small child. Now 35 years old, Hallie is dealing with her divorce and her father’s terminal illness. When she receives an envelope in the mail, she is shocked to find it contains a letter from her mother. As it turns out, Madlyn has lived the last 30 years believing that Hallie and her father were killed in a kayaking accident on the lake. The letter from Madlyn is accompanied by a letter from her attorney breaking the news that Madlyn has recently passed away. In order to find out why her father went to such lengths to keep her from her mother, Hallie travels to her mother’s home on Grand Manitou, a remote island in the Great Lakes. It isn’t long before Hallie realizes that something supernatural inhabits the mansion and grounds which she has just inherited.

The Tale of Halcyon Crane is an unnerving ghost story that’s setting on a secluded island makes it even creepier.

Who will like this book? Ghost story aficionados.

Recommended by: Sue, Circulation Coordinator

Hold My Hand

Title: Hold My Hand

Author:  Serena Mackesy

Publisher: Constable, October 2008

Summary: All Bridget wants is a safe place to raise her daughter Yasmin. The flat they share in London has become a prison instead of a home. Though Bridget has divorced her abusive husband and the court has ordered Kieran to stay away, he continues to stalk the two vowing to make Bridget pay for leaving him. Bridget struggles to keep a roof over their heads and food on their table as fear and desperation set in. The hope for a new and better life for Bridget and Yasmin comes in the form of a job offer. Bridget is offered the job of housekeeper at Rospetroc, a manor house in a part of the country where no one will know them- where they will be safe. Rospetroc, however, has it’s own secrets and it’s own brutal history. The villagers have their suspicions as to why there is such a high turnover rate for housekeepers at Rospetroc. Bridget has run out of options and must stay at the manor house, even though the move now seems like a dangerous mistake.

Who will like this book?  Anyone who likes ghost stories and a bit of mystery.

Recommended by: Sue, Circulation Coordinator

Ghost – A Novel

Title: Ghost – a Novel

Author: Alan Lightman

Summary: What happens when an ordinary person experiences something truly extra-ordinary? In the case of David Kurzweil, his life is completely turned upside down. This is a fascinating story about a man struggling with some fairly typical mid-life issues (divorce, career change, etc.), who unexpectedly finds himself in the middle of a scientific and metaphysical controversy after he witnesses something paranormal in the funeral home where he works. David’s effort to understand what he has seen takes him on an emotional journey that will change his relationships, his beliefs, and his place in the world forever.

Author and physicist Alan Lightman writes with sensitivity and compassion, gently suggesting that there just might be a world that exists beyond the material one, a world “felt only in brief, fleeting stabs.”

Who will like this book: Anyone who was a fan of the TV show “Six Feet Under.”

Recommended by: Mary, Reference Librarian