October 3

One By One – D. W. Gillespie

The Easton family has just moved into their new fixer-upper, a beautiful old house that they bought at a steal, and Alice, the youngest of the family, is excited to explore the strange, new place. Her excitement turns to growing dread as she discovers a picture hidden under the old wallpaper, a child’s drawing of a family just like hers.

Soon after, members of the family begin to disappear, each victim marked on the child’s drawing with a dark black X. It’s up to her to unlock the grim mystery of the house before she becomes the next victim.

 

My thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for the chance to close out the One By One blog tour.  I received a review copy from publishers, Flame Tree Press – my thanks to them too.

 

October does bring out my craving to read creepy books so huge thanks to Flame Tree Press for the opportunity to read DW Gillespie’s latest release – One By One.  As you will have picked up from the blurb (above) this one sounded a proper chiller…new family move into big old house.  Haunted?  Unusual for sure and the child’s stick drawing of a family and their pet dog (uncovered by 10 year old Alice when she peeled away a strip of wallpaper) has a sinister element rather than the cute cheery image the picture *could* have had.

Alice is the main focus for One By One, indeed it is her story we share for the most part.  Though for reasons which partly fall into the “spoiler” category there are some necessary parts of the story which are told through the eyes of another.

Alice, her parents and her elder brother, Dean, have moved into their new home.  It has very unusual design features, quirky and peculiar interior planning and it really needs a lot of work done. A “fixer-upper” and a bargain…but bargains usually come with a story which Alice’s father seems happy to ignore.  Soon after the family move into the house things begin to change and tempers become frayed.

Alice, as the youngest, is scared by the new house not helped by the “face” she saw at her window on the first night. Her imagination runs wild but as a natural daydreamer her parents are not listening to her worries.  But they cannot ignore the reality of a death in the household and a large black cross painted over the corresponding figure from the child’s drawing of the family.

I don’t want to share too much more detail about events in One By One but for Alice the danger is very real.  Her family are disappearing and more crosses are appearing on the picture – can Alice save herself?

Small cast of characters, isolated location and a child terrified and unsure who to trust. A tense chiller which I zipped through in two fully captivated sittings.

 

One By One is published by Flame Tree Press and is available in paperback and digital format.  You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Fiction-Without-Frontiers-ebook/dp/B07X3Q89JS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3ETV6WWVV5DDU&keywords=one+by+one+dw+gillespie&qid=1570124437&s=digital-text&sprefix=one+by+one+%2Cdigital-text%2C759&sr=1-1

 

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October 9

The House by the Cemetery – John Everson

Rumor has it that the abandoned house by the cemetery is haunted by the ghost of a witch. But rumors won’t stop carpenter Mike Kostner from rehabbing the place as a haunted house attraction. Soon he’ll learn that fresh wood and nails can’t keep decades of rumors down.

There are noises in the walls, and fresh blood on the floor: secrets that would be better not to discover. And behind the rumors is a real ghost who will do whatever it takes to ensure the house reopens. She needs people to fill her house on Halloween. There’s a dark, horrible ritual to fulfill. Because while the witch may have been dead… she doesn’t intend to stay that way.

My thanks to Flame Tree Press for my review copy and to Anne Cater at Random Things Blog Tours for the chance to join this tour.

 

Just in time for Halloween we have a new release ideally suited for reading durint the dark autumnal evenings. John Everson’s The House by the Cemetery brings a great mix of chills, witches, ritualistic kills and at the heart of it all a house reputed to be haunted.

The scene is set perfectly from the prologue when we see a group of kids exploring the haunted house under cover of night – their trip is a dare and the house seems to be a haunted property marketed as a visitor attraction. However, it is night and the kids are in a place they are not meant to be so we can be sure all will not end well and a mystery is quickly established.

What I particularly enjoyed about The House by the Cemetery was that the author grabbed my interest in the prologue then takes a small step back to build up the chills and the creepy events. It is very effective and avoids the less subtle ‘schlock horror’ where every second chapter is a bloodbath. Constant build and increasing peculiarities gave the impression of a growing menace.

Our lead character, Mike, is renovating the haunted house – making it ready for paying visitors who will part with their bucks for a scare on 31 October. The longer Mike spends in the house the more he becomes aware of the odd and unpleasant incidents which are happening. Yet he presses on with his work, removing dead animals one morning and chatting with the young woman who comes to the house to chat with him and share some beers. You want to shout at your book to make Mike get the Hell away from the creepy property but he needs the cash and keeps coming back…can it end well for him?

John Everson has a very readable writing style and I poured over The House by the Cemetery. “One more chapter” is the best internal debate to have when I am reading late at night and it was  very much in evidence here.

Get yourself some Halloween reading and order a copy of The House by the Cemetery. Chills aplenty.

 

The House by the Cemetery is published by Flame Tree Press on 18 October and can be ordered here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/House-Cemetery-Fiction-Without-Frontiers-ebook/dp/B07J2MQ5N8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1539029287&sr=1-1&keywords=house+by+the+cemetery

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July 22

The Ghost Hunters – Neil Spring

Ghost HuntersWelcome to Borley Rectory, the most haunted house in England.

The year is 1926 and Sarah Grey has landed herself an unlikely new job – personal assistant to Harry Price, London’s most infamous ghost hunter. Equal parts brilliant and charming, neurotic and manipulative, Harry has devoted his life to exposing the truth behind England’s many ‘false hauntings’, and never has he left a case unsolved, nor a fraud unexposed.
So when Harry and Sarah are invited to Borley Rectory – a house so haunted that objects frequently fly through the air unbidden, and locals avoid the grounds for fear of facing the spectral nun that walks there – they’re sure that this case will be just like any other. But when night falls and still no artifice can be found, the ghost hunters are forced to confront an uncomfortable possibility: the ghost of Borley Rectory may be real. And, if so, they’re about to make its most intimate acquaintance.

 

My thanks to Quercus for my review copy which I received through Netgalley.

Borley Rectory, the first “real” haunted house that I had ever heard of (thanks to an Usborne book of ghosts in my primary school library). It sparked a fascination for ghost stories that never really went away.

When I heard about Neil Spring’s The Ghost Hunters I knew that this was a book I really wanted to read. As usual I was late to the party as The Ghost Hunters released in 2013, but good books are not time critical and they don’t all need to be read in the week of release. As I wasn’t battling a reading deadline I was able to take my time and enjoy the detail in the story and I believe enjoyed it all the more as a result.

Basing the story around Harry Price (a real person who did investigate Borley Rectory in the late 1920’s) we see events through the eyes of Harry’s assistant Sarah Grey.  Though Harry and Borley Rectory (and all the mysterious events within) are key to the plot this is Sarah’s story and it is often a harrowing tale. Sarah first meets Price when she takes her mother to a séance at Price’s London laboratory, Sarah’s father died in the Great War and her mother has not coped well since his passing.  The family are somewhat down on their fortunes but Sarah hopes that making a “connection” with her father will bring peace for her mother. Things take an unexpected turn (no spoilers) but ultimately Sarah ends up working for Price.

I will confess that at this stage in the story I was a little frustrated that Borley was not getting a mention (I am sometimes an impatient reader) but once Price and Sarah are teamed up things pick up pace.  By the time I finished The Ghost Hunters I appreciated why so much of the early part of the book had concentrated on Sarah, her background and the unpredictable and often unlikeable Price.  Stick with this as the payoff is absolutely worth it.

Price and Sarah begin an investigation into the “hauntings” at Borley.  A ghostly nun, ringing bells, projectiles aimed at residents, unexplained cold patches in the middle of rooms. Neil Spring paints a delightfully creepy story around the “hauntings”.  But Price is out to explain the unexplained and debunk the myth of ghosts – he has his work cut out and will let nobody stand in the way of proving he is right.  Friendships are scarce for Mr Price, his methods are controversial and he is not a likeable character – it makes for fascinating reading.

The Ghost Hunters is a story about a life but the focus is the dead. Through Sarah Grey we chart the fantastic career of Harry Price and see the legacy he left. There is so much depth to this book, far beyond a simple Haunted House tale that it really is one to take time to enjoy.

 

The Ghost Hunters is published by Quercus. You can order a copy by clicking through the link here.

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October 21

The House On Cold Hill – Peter James

The House On Cold HillThey said the dead can’t hurt you . . . They were wrong.

The House on Cold Hill is a chilling and suspenseful ghost story from the multi-million copy bestselling author of Dead Simple, Peter James.

Moving from the heart of Brighton and Hove to the Sussex countryside is a big undertaking for Ollie and Caro Harcourt and their twelve-year-old daughter Jade. But when they view Cold Hill House – a huge, dilapidated Georgian mansion – Ollie is filled with excitement. Despite the financial strain of the move, he has dreamed of living in the country since he was a child, and he sees Cold Hill House as a paradise for his animal-loving daughter, the perfect base for his web-design business and a terrific long-term investment. Caro is less certain, and Jade is grumpy about being separated from her friends.

Within days of moving in, it becomes apparent that the Harcourt family aren’t the only residents of the house. A friend of Jade’s is the first to see the spectral woman, standing behind her as the girls talk on FaceTime. Then there are more sightings, as well as increasingly disturbing occurrences in the house. As the haunting becomes more malevolent and the house itself begins to turn on the Harcourts, the terrified family discover Cold Hill House’s dark history, and the horrible truth of what it could mean for them . . .

My thanks to Julia at Midas PR for my beautiful review copy.

 

The House on Cold Hill – a terrific ghost story and a perfectly timed release with Halloween just around the corner.

When I first read Peter James it was around the time he released Prophecy and Twilight. I was discovering books about ghosts and monsters and taking a break from my normal choice of reading (which was always crime fiction). Mr James was a writer of horror stories and he was bloody good at it too. Time passed and he introduced us to a character called Roy Grace and in doing so firmly established himself as a bit of a wizard at writing great crime stories too.

The House on Cold Hill sees Peter James take a break from the Grace novels and return to a stand-alone horror tale. As I had recently been lamenting the lack of horror tales in my TBR pile I could not wait to get my teeth into this one – and I was not to be disappointed!

As you may have guessed, The House on Cold Hill is a haunted house – the efficiency of the haunting is firmly cemented in the opening chapters with a shocking scene which caught me unawares. This was the perfect reminder for me that in a good horror story ANYTHING can happen.

The story follows Oliver and Caro Harcourt and their daughter Jade. They have bought Cold Hill House and are looking forward to a fresh start away from the city in their grand country home. But even as they are moving there are some unexplained occurrences, mysterious shadows crossing a room and one of the family may have seen a figure who should not have been in the house at the time.

As the story progresses Peter James does a brilliant job of building up the tension for the reader who can never quite be sure how much characters can be trusted, how accurate conversations are or who may escape the story unscathed. A special mention to one scene which made me glad I do not ever need to FaceTime!

I was totally drawn into The House on Cold Hill, I was compelled to keep reading long into the night and it made me realise how much I have missed reading a good horror story.  This book is an absolute treat for readers who enjoy a chilling tale in the dark winter evenings. A must read – a five star score.

 

The House on Cold Hill is published by Macmillan and is available in Hardback and digital format

Peter James is on Twitter: @peterjamesuk

 

 

 

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