The Fireside Chats

I went to the book store today and came away with quite the book haul. I always leave with books in hand when I go to the book store but I really spent a pretty penny at the book store today. You can’t say that I don’t have anything to read at my house. If I get any more books, I’m probably going to have to buy more book cases. *sheepish grin*

Synopsis: This House Is Haunted is a striking homage to the classic nineteenth-century ghost story. Set in Norfolk in 1867, Eliza Caine responds to an ad for a governess position at Gaudlin Hall. When she arrives at the hall, shaken by an unsettling disturbance that occurred during her travels, she is greeted by the two children now in her care, Isabella and Eustace. There is no adult present to represent her mysterious employer, and the children offer no explanation. Later that night in her room, another terrifying experience further reinforces the sense that something is very wrong.
 
From the moment Eliza rises the following morning, her every step seems dogged by a malign presence that lives within Gaudlin’s walls. Eliza realizes that if she and the children are to survive its violent attentions, she must first uncover the hall’s long-buried secrets and confront the demons of its past. Clever, captivating, and witty, This House Is Haunted is pure entertainment with a catch.

Synopsis: Christmas Eve, and the Lee family’s reunion is shattered by a deafening crash of furniture and a high-pitched wailing scream. Upstairs, the tyrannical Simeon Lee lies dead in a pool of blood, his throat slashed.

When Hercule Poirot offers to assist, he finds an atmosphere not of mourning but of mutual suspicion. It seems everyone had their own reason to hate the old man. . . .

Synopsis: Eric Ross is on the run from a mysterious past with his two daughters in tow. Having left his wife, his house, his whole life behind in Maryland, he’s desperate for money–it’s not easy to find safe work when you can’t provide references, you can’t stay in one place for long, and you’re paranoid that your past is creeping back up on you.

When he comes across the strange ad for the Masson House in Degener, Texas, Eric thinks they may have finally caught a lucky break. The Masson property, notorious for being one of the most haunted places in Texas, needs a caretaker of sorts. The owner is looking for proof of paranormal activity. All they need to do is stay in the house and keep a detailed record of everything that happens there. Provided the house’s horrors don’t drive them all mad, like the caretakers before them.

The job calls to Eric, not just because there’s a huge payout if they can make it through, but because he wants to explore the secrets of the spite house. If it is indeed haunted, maybe it’ll help him understand the uncanny power that clings to his family, driving them from town to town, making them afraid to stop running. A terrifying Gothic thriller about grief and death and the depths of a father’s love, Johnny Compton’s The Spite House is a stunning debut by a horror master in the making.

Synopsis: April Claus is getting an early gift for her second Christmas in Santaland. Her dear friend, Claire, is visiting from Oregon, and April hopes to show off her adoptive country at its cozy, glittering best. But when the annual ice sculpture contest is derailed by a kamikaze drone-deer, it’s just the first in a series of un-festive events . . .
 
Drone-deer, created by inventor elf Blinky Brightlow, are none too popular with the genuine, flesh-and-hoof kind, who are currently on strike. With no reindeer games to keep them in shape, Nick worries they may get too chunky to pull his sleigh come Christmas. Now Blinky is missing, his girlfriend, Juniper, is under suspicion, and between rogue reindeer and conniving elves, all of Santaland seems to have gone sugarplum-crazy. Add a dash of murder to the mix, and suddenly April is battling not just to clear Juniper’s name, but to save herself from being put on ice—permanently . . .

Synopsis: Julie and James settle into a house in a small town outside the city where they met. The move—prompted by James’s penchant for gambling, his inability to keep his impulses in check—is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to leave behind their usual haunts and start afresh. But this house, which sits between ocean and forest, has plans for the unsuspecting couple. As Julie and James try to settle into their home and their relationship, the house and its surrounding terrain become the locus of increasingly strange happenings. The architecture—claustrophobic, riddled with hidden rooms within rooms—becomes unrecognizable, decaying before their eyes. Stains are animated on the wall—contracting, expanding—and map themselves onto Julie’s body in the form of bruises; mold spores taint the water that James pours from the sink. Together the couple embark on a panicked search for the source of their mutual torment, a journey that mires them in the history of their peculiar neighbors and the mysterious residents who lived in the house before Julia and James.

Written in creepy, potent prose, The Grip of It is an enthralling, psychologically intense novel that deals in questions of home: how we make it and how it in turn makes us, mapping itself onto bodies and the relationships we cherish.

Synopsis: It’s the 1980s and Sam Gregory, a substance-abusing war veteran turned insurance investigator, arrives at the galactically elite Danforth Putnam boarding school off the coast of New England to find a stolen manuscript of incalculable value. He soon senses that something far stranger than missing books is afoot–and when students begin vanishing from campus, he realizes how serious it is.

At the same time, a reporter is keeping an eye on Sam. Harriet, a physically fragile but spiritually indomitable writer for the school paper, is trying to figure out precisely what he’s up to.

As events at the school become increasingly terrifying, Sam and Harriet both venture into increasingly dark territory to crack the mystery. In the end, they uncover a truth more horrible than they could have imagined.

Put the novels of Raymond Chandler and Bram Stoker in a blender, splash in a couple drops of Stranger Things, and pour yourself a nice tall glass of Friend of the Devil.

Synopsis: Bookish high school student Rintaro Natsuki is about to close the secondhand bookstore he inherited from his beloved bookworm grandfather. Then, a talking cat appears with an unusual request. The feline asks for—or rather, demands—the teenager’s help in saving books with him. The world is full of lonely books left unread and unloved, and the cat and Rintaro must liberate them from their neglectful owners. 

Their mission sends this odd couple on an amazing journey, where they enter different mazes to set books free. Through their travels, the cat and Rintaro meet a man who leaves his books to perish on a bookshelf, an unwitting book torturer who cuts the pages of books into snippets to help people speed read, and a publishing drone who only wants to create bestsellers. Their adventures culminate in one final, unforgettable challenge—the last maze that awaits leads Rintaro down a realm only the bravest dare enter . . . 

An enthralling tale of books, first love, fantasy, and an unusual friendship with a talking cat, The Cat Who Saved Books is a story for those for whom books are so much more than words on paper. 

Synopsis: coffee days, whiskey nights is a collection of poetry, prose, and aphorisms that juxtaposes the hopefulness a brand new day can bring with the lingering thoughts that often keep us up into the late-night hours. A lot can happen between the first sip of coffee and the last taste of whiskey, and this book takes a look at the way a single day can change our outlook on everything from relationships with others, to our relationships with ourselves, and everything in between. Ultimately, coffee days, whiskey nights illustrates that no matter how hopeless we may feel at the end of the day, a new one is only a few hours away.

Synopsis: Poetry for the soul that walks a fine line between losing yourself in the world and finding yourself again, often in the smallest of moments. Courtney Peppernell, author of the internationally best-selling poetry series Pillow Thoughts delivers another collection of prose and poetry that asks the reader to look deep within themselves and heal the ache.

The Road Between is the journey you take from the shadows to the light. Settle in, lose yourself in the pages, and find the strength to come back home.

Synopsis: Paul Roland, author of The Complete Book Of Ghosts and Investigating The Unexplained, unearths disturbing new evidence that reveals how restless spirits are not confined to crumbling castles and historic haunted houses. The dead are all around us, constantly trying to communicate, and now they have access through our computers, TVs, and even our mobile phones! The truth is more terrifying than anything seen on the movie screen.

Read about the owners of a modern dream house who took their spectral squatter to court, the dead pilot who took the controls of a crippled aircraft, the ghostbusters who got more than they bargained for, and the murder victim who came back from the grave to put a killer behind bars.

Synopsis: Martin Greenough’s walled-off mansion is the last remaining holdout in the Boston parkland known as the Fenway—and the fact that it eluded condemnation by the city is a testament to the elderly bachelor’s great wealth. Childless and nearing the end of his life, he surrounds himself with only his cat, his servants, and a friend, Mrs. Warden—to say nothing of the circle of extended family members whose lives he both subsidizes and rules from afar, the nieces and nephews who all seem to be more fond of Uncle Mart’s money than they are of his character.


On the eve of his birthday, Greenough requests the presence of his heirs at his home, insisting that he has something important to discuss. Before that discussion can take place, though, the man is murdered in his study. In one way or another nearly everyone there would benefit by his death, and none gathered seem terribly upset by it, so finding the culprit is no easy task for Inspector Kane of the Boston PD. But as he untangles the threads and unburies dark family secrets, the discovery of a bizarre clue might hold the key to solving the crime.


A classical “closed circle” mystery featuring a colorful cast of characters, Cat’s Paw exemplifies the puzzling, house-bound tales for which Roger Scarlett is remembered today. It is sure to delight any fan of pure, Golden Age detective stories—especially those with a love of architecturally-focused plots.

Synopsis: A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He’s not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family.

Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel.

Synopsis:

Vermont, 1950. There’s a place for the girls whom no one wants–the troublemakers, the illegitimate, the too smart for their own good. It’s called Idlewild Hall. And in the small town where it’s located, there are rumors that the boarding school is haunted. Four roommates bond over their whispered fears, their budding friendship blossoming–until one of them mysteriously disappears. . . .

Vermont, 2014. As much as she’s tried, journalist Fiona Sheridan cannot stop revisiting the events surrounding her older sister’s death. Twenty years ago, her body was found lying in the overgrown fields near the ruins of Idlewild Hall. And though her sister’s boyfriend was tried and convicted of murder, Fiona can’t shake the suspicion that something was never right about the case.

When Fiona discovers that Idlewild Hall is being restored by an anonymous benefactor, she decides to write a story about it. But a shocking discovery during the renovations will link the loss of her sister to secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the past–and a voice that won’t be silenced. . . .

Synopsis: A house with a terrifying appetite haunts a broken family in this atmospheric horror, perfect for fans of Mexican Gothic.

When Jade Nguyen arrives in Vietnam for a visit with her estranged father, she has one goal: survive five weeks pretending to be a happy family in the French colonial house Ba is restoring. She’s always lied to fit in, so if she’s straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough, she can get out with the college money he promised.

But the house has other plans. Night after night, Jade wakes up paralyzed. The walls exude a thrumming sound, while bugs leave their legs and feelers in places they don’t belong. She finds curious traces of her ancestors in the gardens they once tended. And at night Jade can’t ignore the ghost of the beautiful bride who leaves her cryptic warnings: Don’t eat.

Neither Ba nor her sweet sister Lily believe that there is anything strange happening. With help from a delinquent girl, Jade will prove this house—the home her family has always wanted—will not rest until it destroys them. Maybe, this time, she can keep her family together. As she roots out the house’s rot, she must also face the truth of who she is and who she must become to save them all.