Tunnel of Bones

 

By Victoria Schwab

Cassidy Blake, Book Two

We first met Cassidy and her ghostly friend Jacob (the ghost boy who saved her from drowning) in Edinburgh, Scotland where Cassidy nearly died when she was attack by a desperate ghost woman. While in Scotland, Cassidy made the acquaintance of Lara, a girl about the same age as Cassidy who also has the ability to sense and perceive ghosts. Lara taught her a lot about this ability that Cassidy acquired only after nearly dying.

Cassidy's parents have finished with their work in Scotland and are off to Paris, France, to film another in their videos about ghosts and haunted locations. Neither of her parents can perceive ghosts and even though Cassidy has told them she can, they don't believe her and dismiss her claims about Jacob as being an imaginary friend.

Paris is an ancient city and has its share of ghosts and haunted locations, one of which is surely the Catacombs. It is one of the locations her parents are planning to film and the parents bring Cassidy along enjoy a private tour of this massive underground storage depot of human bones. But, with her usual bad luck, Cassidy attracts the attention of a poltergeist. And this poltergeist follows her out of the Catacombs and starts causing mischief, as poltergeists are wont to do. It's their thing. 

Trying to deal with this poltergeist, Cassidy discovers that the mirror trap trick that she learned from Lara doesn't work on this poltergeist. Lara thinks it is because it has been dead for so long it has forgotten who it is and until it remembers, the mirror trap won't work. The poltergeist will continue to rampage in Paris until Cassidy can find out who it was, how it died and reveal those details to it and then deal with it and send it to its eternal destination.

This was an OK story. I find that Cassidy is a little too precocious for a twelve year old and I would like her better if she was a teen and not an adolescent. She is very sneaky and a liar, both things she probably wouldn't have to do and be if she were four or more years older in the stories. Also she makes friends with a young girl and Cassidy is able to display her ghostly talents quite easily to this child but somehow can't convince her own parents?

Anyway, kids and young teens probably would enjoy this series a lot.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Under the Whispering Door

 

By TJ Klune

Wallace Price is a hard man, a lawyer, partner at an important legal firm. His focus is on himself and on his success. But fate got in the way in the form of a deadly heart attack while at the office on the weekend. Which is how he ended up in the afterlife clad in sweat pants and flip-flop sandals. 

So Wallace is dead, which kind of spoiled all his plans. He did attend his own funeral, which he was rather displeased to see was so sparsely attended. But there was someone at the funeral who was completely unknown to him, a small Chinese woman, who, of all the people in attendance, was the only one who could see him.

Because she was there for Wallace. Because Meiying is a Reaper and she is there to start Wallace on his trip to his ultimate destination. Which is how Wallace ended up at a quaint little tea shop in the mountains run by Hugo Freeman who serves the dead tea and guides them through the Whispering Door and into eternity. Hugo is the Ferryman.

Meiying, when she is not being a Reaper, works for Hugo in the kitchen of the tea shop. Besides Meiying, Hugo's grandfather and his dog, Apollo also reside at the tea shop. But unlike Meiying, Apollo and Nelson, the grandfather, are both ghosts, like Wallace. Ghosts who refused to pass through the Whispering Door and into eternity because Hugo still needed them in his life. And pretty soon, the same is true of Wallace as Hugo and Wallace find companionship in each other that they have been missing in their lives. Makes for an uneven relationship, though, since Hugo is a living man and Wallace is a dead man. 

I was a bit bored with the first quarter of the novel but it got much more interesting as the story progressed. Parts of it were quite moving, especially Chapter 14, which moved me to tears several times. It also had some rather hilarious moments including at the end where Wallace ends up as a floating balloon ghost who needs to be tied down to keep him from floating away and into the, I assume, the infinite depths of Space.

Hugo is a bit too much of a goody-goody for my taste though, as I can show by this passage about him:

But it was Hugo who Wallace watched the most. Hugo, who seemed to have all the time in the world for anyone who asked for his attention. A gaggle of older women came in the early afternoon, fawning and cooing over him, pinching his cheeks and giggling when he blushed. He knew them all by name, and they clearly adored him. They all left with smiles on their faces, paper cups of tea steaming in their hands.

It wasn't just the older women. It was everyone. Kids demanded he lift them up and he did, but not with his hands. They held onto his thinly muscled biceps as he raised his arms, their feet kicking into nothing, their laughter bright and loud. Younger women flirted, batting their eyes at him. Men shook his hand furiously, their grips looking strong as their arms pumped up and down. They called him by his first name. They all seemed delighted to see him. 

A paragon, for sure. His grandfather, Nelson, was more my speed. A bit of a smart ass who wasn't above the occasional ghostly prank, including smacking Wallace with his cane when he was displeased with him. 

I think my favorite character, though, was Apollo, Hugo's ghost dog who had refused to pass on after dying and stayed by Hugo's side because Hugo still needed him. And who was not above taking a ghostly whiz on people who came into the tea shop and upset things, like the nosy phony medium who has the hots for Hugo and the health inspector who has a grudge against Hugo because Hugo spurned his advances.

The book certainly has its lighter moments, like when Wallace is learning how to manifest different clothing after getting tired of sweat pants and flip-flops and ends up dressed only in briefs and thigh high boots. But it also has very touching and serious moments, as the dead pass through the shop, dealing with their deaths and their regrets and their lost lives, of which Wallace is one of, facing the truth about why his marriage failed and how success in business became more important to him than success as a human being. And how Hugo, Nelson, Meiying, and Apollo become more important to him than anyone he left behind in life.

Here is a review by Berkeley Fiction Review. 

 

     

Man and Dog

 

By Brad Steiger

From the book jacket:

"Brad Steiger explores the bond between human and canine by relating true stories of the remarkable social-spiritual contract that has existed between humankind and its loyal companions for thousands of years. He shares fascinating true stories about the creatures that have more than earned the title of 'man's best friend,' such as:

• A man, paralyzed and alone, who was kept alive by his dog for nine days
• The dog that brought a girl back from a five-week coma
• A dog named 'Blaze' that saved a family from fire

Brad Steiger also reveals the findings of current medical research into the positive effects pets have on our lives, from lowering blood pressure and alleviating stress to easing the pain of bereavement.

In this charming, thought-provoking, often astounding book, Brad Steiger fully substantiates the 'ancient contract between dogs and human.'"

The book jacket also includes a review by Publishers Weekly: "Remarkable tales of canine heroism...Steiger gives advice on how to communicate with dogs, discusses the value of pet therapy and offers several instances of ghost dogs appearing to their owners. Also covered are findings of current medical research into the positive effects of pets on humans, such as lowered blood pressure...enjoyable."

The book is chock full of mystical claims and other such other worldly stuff. I enjoyed the ghost stories and the stories about the bond between people and their dogs and the stories of dogs helping people. But the mystical content did not interest me and I skipped most of it. 

Hidden Pictures

 

By Jason Rekulak

Mallory Quinn became addicted to prescription pain relievers after being injured in a car crash. She hit rock bottom and overdosed in the back of an Uber and ended up in rehab. Now she's been clean for about a year and a half and is starting her first job in a long time as a full time babysitter for an upper middle class family living in a small, rural town. 

Caroline and Ted Maxwell and their child, Teddy, seem to be a lovely family. Their large house features a full-size swimming pool and a pool house that had been remodeled into an tiny home for the new babysitter. It will be the first time Mallory has lived alone in a long time. It will be a test of her commitment to staying off drugs. 

Of course, things are never quite as good as they appear. Teddy has been drawing pictures, pictures that become more and more skilled and more and more strange over time. In one picture, a man appears to be dragging a woman's body through the woods. In another it looks like the woman is at the bottom of a hole as the man stands above looking down. Teddy claims his invisible friend, Anya, tells him what to draw.

After listening to the local gossip, Mallory becomes convinced that Teddy is channeling the spirit of a woman who vanished back in 1948 who used to live at the house where the Maxwells now live. And the woman, Annie, was an artist who used the pool house as a studio. So Mallory begins looking into Annie's past, helped by her new friend, a local man, Adrian, because she is worried that Teddy is being damaged by Anya. And Teddy's parents just keep dismissing her concerns. But her and Adrian's investigations lead them in a totally unexpected direction. 

This was an interesting mystery/thriller/ghost story. At some point, Adrian and Mallory figure out that the spirit hanging around Teddy communicates by drawing because the spirit doesn't speak English and that Anya means mommy in her language. Which then leads them to a better understanding of the communication they received from her via a spirit board which they had first dismissed as gibberish.

I was totally not expecting the direction the story takes in last part. Frankly, I missed some clues the author gives that reveal the Maxwell family is not what they appear to be. It's always a pleasure to be surprised by the ending of a novel. For quite a while, I was beginning to think the evil doer in the story was actually Mallory, who lies to her new friend Adrian about her past. Which was a pretty good red herring. 

The novel includes Teddy's/Anya's drawings and it really adds a wonderful dimension to the story. They start out as typical little kid drawings but change into skilled artistic images that are just a pleasure to experience. Well done to the artists, Will Staehle and Doogie Horner.

Here is a review by Kirkus.

City of Ghosts

By Victoria Schwab

Cassidy Blake, Book One.

Cassidy Blake nearly died drowning. But she was rescued by a boy who became her best friend, Jacob. And ever since that near-death experience, Cassidy can sense and see ghosts. The first ghost she ever saw was Jacob. Jacob was already a ghost when he saved her from drowning.
Now Cassidy's parents are traveling to Edinburgh, Scotland to film a TV show and Cassidy will be with them along with Jacob the ghost who has attached himself to her. How and why he has done this, he can't or won't
say. But Cassidy doesn't mind since Jacob is the only friend she has.
Together the two teens, one living and one dead, will take on one of the most haunted cities in the world, Edinburgh, with the help of local teen,
Lara, the ghost hunter.

This was an okay story. Intended for teens and older children, it was a fast and easy read. This book is the first in a series. Although this first book was okay, I didn't find it interesting enough to continue on with the series. It ought to appeal to its intended audience, though.

Review by Kirkus Reviews.

Kill the Dead

By Tanith Lee

When Parl Dro was a young teen boy, a girl he liked was killed and her ghost began haunting him. It drew strength from Parl Dro and tried to tempt him into joining it in death. This was the beginning of Parl Dro's start as an exorcist, one who puts the dead to permanent rest,
Parl Dro is not alone in this tale. He is joined by a talented musician who plays an extraordinary instrument. Myal Lemyal has not had a prosperous or happy life. As he explains to Parl Dro, he wants to write an epic song and thus make his fortune. He wants to base the song on Parl Dro's battle with the ghost town of Ghyste Mortua, a battle that rumor has it is Parl Dro's ultimate destination.
A third "person" will accompany the two men on their trip to Ghyste Mortua: the ghost of Ciddey Soban. Ciddey may be dead, but her need for revenge against Parl Dro burns. Parl Dro came to Ciddey's house and against her wishes laid to rest the ghost of her dead sister, a ghost that Ciddey had purposely freed from the grave. Upon discovering what Parl Dro had done, Ciddey promptly killed herself, crazed with grief upon losing her sister for the second time. Her ghost has attached itself to Myal Lemyal and is following him and Parl Dro on their fateful journey to face the killer ghosts of Ghyste Mortua.

This was not an interesting story. It was boring. Although I did find the twist at the end to be unexpected and surprising. It kind of redeemed the rest of the story.

The Family Plot

By Cherie Priest

Dahlia is in charge of the salvage of an old mansion. It is a make or break situation for her father, who owns the salvage company. If it isn't successful, then the whole business is going under. So it is really important that Dahlia and her team of three men do a really good job of removing anything of value before the mansion is demolished.
Problem is, as they all soon discover, the mansion is haunted. There are four ghosts and one of them is crazy and evil. It fastens its sights on Dahlia because it identifies with her. Dahlia is recently divorced. She and her ex were friends from childhood and the collapse of their marriage came as a surprise to Dahlia who apparently never picked up on her husband's discontent.  The divorce left her feeling angry and it is her anger that has attracted the deadly lunatic ghost.
But Dahlia and the crew soldier on and strip the old mansion of all its most valuable and beautiful features, trying to cope as best they can with the uncanny occurrences plaguing them, mostly at night. But before it is all over, blood will be shed and lives nearly lost.

This was an OK story. Kind of a slow starter and the ghostly occurrences are few and far between until the last quarter of the story. Truly, just a typical ghost story, nothing very special at all and not really all that scary. But it does give one a good look at the salvage business, if that is what floats your boat. It didn't float mine.

Review from Kirkus Reviews.

True Experiences with Ghosts

Edited by Martin Ebon

The editor gathered several ghost stories that he believed were true, unexplainable events.
One of the stories concerns Ocean Born Mary. According to the story and to information I found online, Ocean Born Mary was a real person. Her parents were traveling to America by boat when the boat was intercepted by a pirate. He planned to pillage the boat and kill all aboard, when he heard a newborn baby crying. Going to investigate, he found the captain's wife and her tiny baby, who was born on board the boat. He was charmed and promised to spare everyone is the new mother would name her baby Mary, after the pirate's wife. She agreed and the pirate left the boat. He later returned with a bolt of expensive green  silk cloth which he gave to baby Mary to made into a wedding gown when she grew up and married.
All this part of the story of Ocean Born Mary are true to that point. But then the author of the story, Louis Roy, starts making stuff up. He bought a house in the town where Mary spent her old age which he then claimed was haunted by her and by the pirate who befriended her. He claimed the house was built by the pirate and that Mary moved into it to be his companion and housekeeper. He claimed the pirate died and was buried there along with his pirate treasure. He further claimed many people had seen or experienced many uncanny and eerie things on the property and in the house, which he also claimed was filled with Mary's original furniture.
But there is a site online, by the local historical society, that totally debunks all of Roy's claims. The house was built by one of Mary's sons, not by a pirate. Mary never lived in the house, she lived in a nearby house with one of her other sons and, at the time, she was quite elderly, in her seventies. Her furniture was never in the house, since she never lived there. The pirate also never lived there and was never part of Mary's life beyond that first encounter. Roy made all the haunting nonsense up and charged people admission to the house and property. The details can be found at Henniker Historical Society website: http://www.hennikerhistory.org/obmary.htm.
Since this story was so thoroughly and easily debunked. it casts doubt on the veracity of the other stories in the book. I am inclined to believe it is all a bunch of made up nonsense. The one proven false story taints all the other stories, I am sorry to say.
But besides all that, it just wasn't a very interesting book. It cloaks itself in scientific & scholarly terms but, although the editor might have intended it to add weight to the book, it merely makes it dull.

Give Up the Ghost

By Juliet Blackwell

Mel Turner is a building contractor. She does a lot of renovation work. She also has the dubious ability to see ghosts.
Andrew Flynt is the proud owner of a renovated Victorian mansion. The mansion's insides were completely gutted and modernized. But in the process of renovating the house, a ghost became aroused and upset and made life difficult for the Flynts. So they decided to sell the house. But the ghost keeps scaring potential buyers away.
Flynt hired a psychic to help him with the problem and the psychic, Chantelle, told him the ghost didn't like the changes and she gave him a list of things that needed to be restored to put the ghost to rest. Thus the hiring of Mel Turner.
The first thing Turner decided to do was pay a visit to Chantelle. But when she arrived at Chantelle's apartment it was only to find her dead with her brother kneeling beside his sister's body.
And Mel Turner's new renovation project just got a lot more complicated.

This was a fairly good read. It really got my interest for the first half of the book. But then it just seemed to drag on and on and I was getting tired of it. But I think the first part was stellar, I just wish it held up better.
For another review, see  https://suspense.nightowlreviews.com/v5/reviews/roxanne-reviews-give-up-the-ghost-by-juliet-blackwell.

Ghost Cat

By Beverly Butler
Annabel's mother has a boyfriend and she wants to spend the summer with the boyfriend and so Annabel gets shipped off to Wisconsin to live with her great aunt and uncle and various cousins for the summer. Annabel doesn't approve of her mother's new boyfriend and she resents being sent away.
The three teen cousins staying there too are Donna, Michael and Todd. These three have spent the summer there for several years and that makes Annabel an instant outsider. Especially intolerant is fifteen-year-old Todd, who call Annabel Clarabel the Cow, poking fun of the fact that Annabel is tall for her age (and much taller than Todd).
A few weeks before leaving for Wisconsin, Annabel's cat Muffin died. So not only is Annabel dealing with her mother's new circumstances, she is also grieving the loss of a beloved pet. She wakes up early one morning to the sound of a cat crying. She goes outside, worried about the cat and wanders into the woods where she is found by Old Pa, Aunt Lil's father who lives with his daughter and her husband. He tells her to leave the cat be and adds, "She'll be stirring soon...Always when there's young folks by. That's when she doesn't rest easy."
"She" turns out to be a neighbor, Julia Craig, who mysteriously vanished one day. She had a kerfluffle with Annabel's Uncle Alex long before Annabel was even born. She accused him of poisoning her cat and, ever since her disappearance, suspicion has fallen on Uncle Alex.
Now her spirit walks the night along with her ghost cat. And Julia has set her sights on Annabel because they have a connection about which Annabel knows nothing. The answer to the riddle can only be found in Julia's abandoned and decaying house.

For a kid's book, the was a pretty good read. The Julia Craig mystery was interesting and its solution neat and clever. The baggage caused by the mystery afflicts the whole group, as the Aunt and Uncle refuse to talk about it and Uncle Alex even gets a little hostile. Plus, Annabel has to deal with the constant put downs of evil cousin Toad, oops, I mean Todd.
The mystery was clever and engaging enough for an adult to enjoy yet remain on a level that would not be too scary for younger readers.

The Uninvited

By Heather Graham

Allison Leigh is a guide at an historic home in Philadelphia. Landon Mansion was commandeered by the British and used by Lord Bedford during the Revolutionary War. Legend has it that young Lucy Tarleton, resident in the home with her family, was a spy for the Americans and cozied up to Lord Bedford to glean information. When he found out, he was said to have stabbed her to death, earning him the nickname Butcher Bedford. Ever since, Landon Mansion has had a rather iffy reputation. Of course, any really old house has had people die in it. Most people died at home, not in a hospital in the past. But in more modern times, there have been at least three unexpected deaths associated with the house. One person died in a fall on the stairs, one died at the desk in the study of a heart attack and a student died while trying to break into the house. All this Allison dismisses as just unfortunate occurrences. But now one of her fellow guides has been found with a bayonet shoved through his throat in the study of the old house. And, as his ghost assures Allison, it was no accident. Allison, who was a staunch denier of all things paranormal, now has to grapple with this ghost haunting her and wanting her to find his unknown killer. That is where the Krewe of Hunters can help. An elite group of FBI agents, the Krewe are all psychics and are used to dealing with the supernatural. Together with Allison they will unearth the truth behind the legend of Butcher Bedford, a truth for which someone is willing to commit murder to keep buried in history.

This was a pretty good story. I had never before read one of the Krewe of Hunters stories and I don't know if it is typical that the ghosts are as interactive as that of the murdered guide in this story. This ghost was pretty much the same as when the young man was alive, rackety, undependable, and even prone to taking naps. He just didn't seem very ghostly. I didn't much care for that. Also, the motive of the killer seemed very weak to me, killing people just to keep anyone from finding out the truth about what happened 250 years in the past. I just didn't find that believable. But other than that, I liked it.

Don of the Dead

By Casey Daniels

Pepper Martin had a pretty easy life. That is until her father was convicted of fraud and sent to prison. Everything Pepper took for granted was gone: loving parents, comfortable family home, wealthy fiancee, secure future. And that's how she ended up as a tour guide for a cemetery.
But after she bumped her head on a tombstone, Pepper's life took a turn for the weird. Because now she is being pursued by a dead man, Augustino Scarpetti, the gangster. He is pestering Pepper to find out who gunned him down back in the 1960s. The police concluded he'd been killed by a rival gang but his murderer was never brought to justice. And until the murderer is revealed Don Scarpetti cannot rest in peace. And he isn't going to give Pepper any peace until she is able to do what the police could not or would not do forty years ago. Only problem is that mobster organizations really don't appreciate strangers poking their noses into their private business, even if that business is forty years in the past.

This was a pretty good story, your basic mystery story with a supernatural twist. It's also obviously the first in what is intended to be a series, as Pepper meets two eligible guys but hooks up with neither. And at the end of the story a new ghost, sent by the dead Don, approaches Pepper for help.

Prominent American Ghosts

By Susy Smith

A visit around the country to old buildings and houses rumored to be haunted by the author. She recounts the stories connected to these hauntings along with much background information about the history and people involved. Although she never actually gets to see any of the ghosts, still her reporting makes for lively and interesting reading and it is also quite a stroll through early American history. Some of the stories are very amazing, especially the ones dealing with poltergeists like the Bell Witch, a poltergeist that tormented a young girl and her family for many years, eventually resulting in the death of the girl's father. The author also details her own experience with a poltergeist that afflicted a warehouse in Florida, believed to be activated by a teenage boy who worked there, since poltergeists are said to be attracted to teenage children. It makes for pretty fascinating and somewhat chilling reading.

I Believe in Ghosts

By Danton Walker

A collection of supposedly true tales of ghostly encounters and quite a few psychic encounters also. Seems like such encounters are not as uncommon as one might think. The stories in the book are interesting and puzzling and give the reader pause. Quite an enjoyable excursion into the unknown.

My Heart Stood Still

By Lynn Kurland

Thomas McKinnon is a very successful businessman and when he is asked to renovate an old keep in the north of England he agrees. It's the kind of challenge he enjoys and he is rich enough that he doesn't need to work. So as a fun break from the ordinary he sets up his base at an inn in the nearby village and proceeds to take a look at the project.
McKinnon is of Scottish ancestry and is somewhat psychic. Before he even left the US to head over to England, he was seeing a Scottish-looking apparition occasionally. So perhaps he wasn't too startled to find that the old, abandoned keep was the home of several ghosts, most of them Scottish. But the one that caught his eye was the beautiful ghost of a young Scottish woman who was murdered at the keep centuries ago. The ghost of Iolanthe MacLeod has been haunting the keep since she was killed there and her haunting is the reason the keep was abandoned centuries ago and left to crumble into ruin.
As Thomas gets to know Iolanthe and learns her tragic story he finds himself falling in love with a dead woman. He also develops quite a friendship with some of Iolanthe's ghostly attendants. Delving more deeply into her history, he becomes convinced that there is a way he can travel back in time, prevent the murder, and hopefully have a life with the flesh and blood woman from the past to whom he is a total stranger.

This was a pretty good story if you can get past some of the fantasy elements. Like the TWILIGHT vampires, the spirits in this story are not the traditional type, being a lot more interactive. In fact, they are more like living people, eating and drinking, changing clothes, growing a garden, chatting and making small talk just like they were alive. In fact, if you didn't try to touch them, you wouldn't be able to tell they were ghosts. So that was a bit different. Also, the time travel thing was made to seem like there is a time slip behind every bush. But never mind, it is still a pretty good story about a man trying to rescue a woman from a terrible fate and then when she is rescued, trying to convince her that he is the man of her dreams and that they belong together several hundred years into the future, which is a bit of a tall order. It was a pretty fun and interesting read.

The Haunted Omnibus

Edited by Alexander Laing

Well, this is just a dandy book of horror stories and ghost stories published in 1937. It has a lot of the old classic stories: "The Yellow Wall Paper", "Perez", "The Wendigo" ("Oh,oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of fire!"), "The Monkey's Paw", "The Beast with Five Fingers", "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", and "The Tell-Tale Heart" along with many others.
I first read the above-mentioned stories in school so I guess they must have been considered literature. I wonder if students now days are given these stories to read? If so, they probably find them rather tame compared to the gruesome slasher movies that are so popular today.
I enjoyed reading this collection of stories and since it is a long book, about 800 pages, I was enveloped by a solemn and gloomy atmosphere for more than a week, which was rather fun. A couple of the stories are quite amusing, namely, "The Ghost Ship" and "Green Thoughts". In "Ghost Ship" a ghost ship (naturally) gets blown into a town that has a lot of ghosts and ends up corrupting the local ghosts with its supply of excellent ghost rum, much to the disapproval of the town elders. In "Green Thoughts" a fussy old man and his old maid companion get eaten by a rare orchid the man raises in his green house, along with the cat and a mouse. They find themselves reconstituted in the carnivorous orchid as huge blossoms that look just like them.
It really is a marvelous collection of not so scary stories and it was fun revisiting those old stories from my childhood. (Of course, they were a lot scarier back then!)

Brother Odd

By Dean Koontz

This story is about a young man named Odd Thomas. He ended up with the name Odd because of a typo on his birth certificate; he was supposed to be named Todd. But the name Odd fits him better because, to paraphrase the movie, he sees dead people.
Ghosts appear to Odd when they need his help dealing with the baggage from their lives that is preventing them from crossing over and entering eternity. The ghosts can't speak, but Odd is very intuitive and is able to figure out what they need from him.
In this story, Odd is at a monastery high in the mountains. He is there not only to deal with a wayward spirit but also to deal with the tragic loss of the woman he loved. But Odd soon discovers that something very sinister is happening when malign spirits that feed on human suffering begin flocking to the school for disabled children that is associated with the monastery.

I liked the premise of a man that helps ghosts. Unfortunately, this book is really just a horror or monster story that reminded me a lot of Stephen King's stuff. It's a kind of story that I am not really a fan of. I guess it was OK if you like that sort of thing. I don't plan on reading any more Koontz though.

Review on Horror Novel Reviews:    https://horrornovelreviews.com/2013/09/30/dean-koontz-brother-odd-review/.