"The Woman in Black" by Susan Hill is a creepy, gothic-y novella about a young lawyer who goes to a remote house that is only accessible when the tide is low to settle the estate of an elderly client who passes away with no kin. The house is haunted by the ghost of a woman whose little boy was killed in an accident there years earlier. Every time the woman shows up, a child in the town dies. It was pretty spooky and I enjoyed it, it was very Poe-esque (I'm just making up words left and right today!).
As I kid I loved "Dear Mr. Henshaw" by Beverly Clearly. I was reading online a few weeks ago about some forgotten childhood favorites, and one of the people commenting on the story mentioned how they loved "Dear Mr. Henshaw" and the sequel and I went WUT? There's a sequel?? I found out that "Strider" is the sequel, featuring Leigh and his mom and his dad, and his new dog. What can I say, it was very nostalgic and I'm glad I found out about it and got to read it.
When Stephen King is good he's good. And then there are times when he is phenomenal, ass-kickingly great, and "Doctor Sleep" was one of those times. Danny Torrance from "The Shining" is all grown up, battling alcoholism. Drinking allows him to tamp down the shine. He ends up in a small town in New Hampshire, where he gets himself together, quits drinking, and becomes a beloved member of the local hospice's team, where he is known as Doctor Sleep for his ability to help the dying pass on. About 30 miles away, a little girl named Abra is born, and her parents figure out pretty quickly that she's special. Dan Torrance could tell them: she has the shining. Abra is actually able to communicate with Dan, so he knows about her long before he meets her in person. Unfortunately, Dan isn't the only one taking notice of little Abra. There is a group of people who feed off special people like Abra who call themselves the True Knot. Once they figure out how powerful Abra is, they come after her. It was really incredible and I got a kick out of how he incorporated Charlie Manx from Joe's book "NOS4A2". Very clever :)
After finishing the Lying Game series, I was looking for something new and fluffy. I read "Monster High" by Lisi Harrison. It was cute, but I won't be in a rush to read the rest. In a town in Oregon, a group of teenagers disguise themselves so they can go to school with the "normies": there's Frankie, who is Frankenstein's Monster's granddaughter; Cleo, descended from Egyptian mummies; Jackson, the grandson of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, etc., etc. Frankie argues to reveal their true nature to the world, believing the normies will be willing to accept them for who they really are, but the rest of the monsters (or RADs, as they refer to themselves) disagree. One of the things that really struck me about this book was how confident and secure with herself Frankie is until she's told otherwise. It makes me feel sad for teenage girls (and grown women) who have their fragile confidence stripped away so easily sometimes.
"The Silver Star" by Jeannette Walls was really good. Sad, but good. In 1970 Liz and Bean are pretty self-sufficient. Their mother runs off and leaves them to fend for themselves quite a bit. But when their mom has a major meltdown and disappears, and the authorities come snooping around, Liz and Bean decide they'd better go to their mother's ancestral home in Virginia and stay with their Uncle Tinsley until their mom is up to taking care of them again. Uncle Tinsley takes them in and the girls start adapting to small town life. They get jobs with a man named Jerry Maddox, who got their uncle kicked out of his own factory. Bean doesn't like working for Maddox and soon quits, but Liz is determined to earn her own way. When she confronts Maddox about taking money he owes her, he assaults her and tried to rape her. Uncle Tinsley doesn't want to make a scene by going to the authorities, but Bean talks Liz into reporting Maddox and the whole mess goes to trial. There was a good message about bullying and I loved the ending.
And finally, Sidney D. Kirkpatrick's "Cast of Killers". Mr. Kirkpatrick set out originally to write a biography about legendary director King Vidor. While going through Vidor's papers, he discovered Vidor was investigating the murder of William Desmond Taylor, another Hollywood actor, back in the 1920s. Vidor believes he solves the forty year old mystery, but doesn't publish his findings while he's still alive because too many others who were alive would be hurt. By the 80s, when Kirkpatrick published this book, there was no such worries and he reveals Vidor's findings. It was an interesting look at how Hollywood worked in the 1920s, and how the studios literally controlled everything.
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