The Peculiar Incident on Shady Street/Lindsay Currie/291 pages (Author's name has double letter)

     The Peculiar Incident on Shady Street starts when seventh grader Tessa Woodward and her family move from sunny Florida to cold and wintery Chicago.  Tessa is grown up enough to know that this is a dream job for her dad so she is trying to make the best of it.  She is not happy about leaving her best friend Rachel, not happy about the change in climate, not happy about starting the school without knowing anyone at the school and definitely not happy about the creepy noises, flickering lights and crying ventriloquist dummy!  Three new friends quickly volunteer to help Tessa figure out what is going on and slowly, the mystery unfolds.
     Wow!  I think Lindsay Currie may create a whole new generation of mystery/ghost story lovers with this one book!  I loved the characters and totally believed that everything that was going on was the work of the long dead ghost of a six year old named Inez.  Great story!  No wonder its a Mark Twain nominee!

Darkest Journey/Heather Graham/465 pages (Mystery)(Author's Last Name Ends with "M")

                                                  Darkest Journey is a novel dealing with the supernatural.  Charlie
                                             Moreau has been able to see ghosts since she was a young girl.  The
                                             man of her dreams, Ethan Delaney, is a member of the FBI's elite
                                             investigative team Krewe's Hunters.  Ethan (along with most of his team)
                                             also has psychic abilities.  Charlie is drawn into a murder investigation
                                             that is pointing at her father as the guilty party in the deaths of two
                                             Civil War reenactors.  One of the ghosts that appears to Charlie seems
                                             to be trying to help solve the mystery and Charlie and Ethan need all the
                                             help they can get.  Another person dies, Ethan and Charlie are
                                             romantically involved and the group takes a  riverboat trip down the river
                                             where they suspect everyone, lots of people are not telling the whole
                                             truth but in the end--they solve the case!
     Part of this novel is very good.  The romance is sweet, the history that threads throughout the story is very interesting and since I'm a fan of ghost fiction, even that was really good.  The author went a little overboard with Civil War ghost soldiers appearing every couple of pages but all in all, its a pretty good fantasy novel.

                      

Heart-Shaped Box/ Joe Hill / 376 pgs

I decided to step outside my usual reading genres and give horror a try. I've always loved horror movies but never really got into reading the books. A colleague recommended this one. Unfortunately, it wasn't for me.

Jude Coyne is an aging rock star, sort of an Ozzy Osbourne-type, who decides to buy a ghost off an eBay-like site to add to his occult collection. I thought this was a fantastic concept for a book but the execution just didn't work for me. I didn't care for Jude and while I could see that the ghost elements "should" be creepy and scary, they just weren't for me. I spent the first 2/3 of the book kind of wishing the vindictive ghost would get Jude, even though I wasn't terribly invested in the ghost either. The latter half held my interest a little better but I found the ending--and the fact that those closest to Jude paid more of a price than he did--unsatisfying. I'm told many, many people love this book, however, so others may enjoy this more than I did.

The Prince of Mist / Carlos Ruiz Zafron / 214 pgs.

"In 1943, in a seaside town where their family has gone to be safe from war, thirteen-year-old Max Carver and sister, fifteen-year-old Alicia, with new friend Roland, face off against an evil magician who is striving to complete a bargain made before he died." [from Catalog]

A pretty straightforward ghost story; family moves into a haunted house, strange things happen, a family curse is uncovered, etc.  The book is clean for young readers, no major gore, relationship issues, no profanity.  I did however, listened to the CD version of this book, and the sound effects and descriptions were pretty eerie, which makes me think that it could actually creep out younger readers.    

Nancy Drew Ghost Stories / Carolyn Keene 151 p.

Nancy Drew, assisted by her long-standing friends Bess Marven and George Fayne, find themselves face to face with ghosts-- a bunch of ghosts -- in this ghostly short story collection. My favorite is The Curse of the Frog. Fortune teller Madame Zurga scares her patrons with the Frog Curse. Unbeknown to Ms. Lammar, she is sitting on a fortune-- pirates' loot. Her uncle leaves a strange request in his will and it takes Nancy to figure it out.

Heart-Shaped Box / Joe Hill / 376 p.

Aging rock star Judas Coyne is a collector of the bizarre and grotesque; so naturally he jumps at the chance to buy a ghost that is for sale on the Internet.  Turns out not everyone on the Internet is who they say they are (shocking!).  The family that sold the ghost are old associates of Coyne and are bent on getting revenge.

The book is gross, creepy, and has many funny moments - everything a good horror novel should have.

BTW (Maryanne) - I highly recommend listening to this on CD the narrator's hypnotic voice was perfect!