The Ghost of Grotteskew by Guy Bass

Stitch Head, the small patchwork first Frankensteinesque creation of mad scientist Professor Erasmus faces a new threat. To his home in gothic Castle Grotteskaw, to his friends the almost-living creations of Erasmus, and to his only human friend the fearless Arabella from the nearby village of Grubbers Nubbin. As he lies on stage trying to remain motionless playing his part as the dead body in the Creative Creations Collective Amateur Dramatics Society's murder mystery production he hears a voice. And no one else is hearing it. Arabella identifies a haunting but as they follow the voice through the castle unusually for her she becomes terrified. The ghost is the spirit of Mawley Crackbone, a fiend who terrorised Grubbers Nubbin. The villagers colluded with Professor Erasmus and he agreed to poison Crackbone in return for his body to experiment on after death. And Stitch Head has something Crackbone wants back. His heart. Oh, and revenge on the people who had him killed. The discovery of a new creation deep under the castle leads Stitch Head to make a terrible deal with the ghost of Crackbone and mayhem is unleashed.

Guy Bass' text is accompanied on every page by Pete Williamson's evocative cartoony black and white drawings and the whole is an immersive experience, bits of text in spooky fonts, chapter pages with hilarious insane quotes from Professor Erasmus, diagrams and maps. A wonderful book for any reader with a taste for the ghoulish, probably suitable for 7 to 9 years old. My 9 year old loves it.