Powerful, not just for teenagers

Li Lan is a 17 year old girl living with her father in 1890s Malaya, her family was once prosperous but is now impoverished and they live quietly.  They are part of the stratified expatriate Chinese community living in Malacca, it is a society of gestures and manners, of honour and reputation. 

Li Lan's father tells her he has received an offer of marriage for her to Lim Tian Ching, son of the wealthy Lim family.  However, this is a ghost marriage, Lim

Tian Ching recently died and although unusual it is not unknown, the bride of such a union has a place in her bridegroom's household and that of the Lim's offers her a luxurious life and security that her father cannot.  Summoned by Lim Tian Ching's mother she is drawn to his cousin Tian Bai.  Trying to gain sleep and rest from dreams in which she is plagued by Lim Tian Ching's spirit she accidentally overdoses on powerful herbs and pitches herself into the hinterland between life and death.  Comotose in the living world her spirit embarks on a journey to the Chinese underworld where status is conferred by the funeral offerings familes make for their ancestors and she has to find a way to defeat the forces pitted against her. 

Li Lan's story is a mythic one and infused with a strongly communicated sense of what life would be like for a 17 year old girl in Malacca in the 1890s, intelligent, determined, loving, but bound by strict courtly rules.  The supernatural elements concerning the Chinese afterlife are convincing and seem well researched.  I really enjoyed it, a well written book.

The Hungry Ghosts by Anne Berry

The extraordinary story of two girls, Alice, youngest daughter of a member of the colonial Hong Kong British government and the wife who only wanted to provide her husband with her son, and the girl who haunts her, the ghost of Lin Shui, a young virgin raped and murdered by a Japanese occupying solider during World War II 20 years earlier.  Alice is a ghost to her own family, unwanted by her mother, adored by her father, largely absent and unable to protect her from the increasing hostilities of her sisters and mother, and held accountable for the action of Lin who is drawn to Alice's life force and loneliness and moves and destroys objects around her as a misplaced act of affection.  As colonial rule in Hong Kong is rent asunder by civil unrest and Alice and her family are exiled to England, a country that has never been home to them, Alice's entourage is swollen by further restless spirits.  Berry handles the entire narrative beautifully, even Alice's monstrous mother is comprehendable in her own pain and reasons for the mental and physical torture she deals out to Alice, an amazing book of aching sadness.

The Eyes of Darkness by Dean R Koontz

Tina Evans is an ex Vegas showgirl opening her first major show on the Strip and slowly coming to terms with the death a year earlier of her 12 year old son in a terrible crash with his scout troop in the high Sierra mountains, a crash that left his body so mangled she and her husband were advised to have a closed coffin ceremony.  Tina is now living alone, Danny's room remains unchanged and one night she hears a heavy thump from his room.  She finds Danny's blackboard overturned, on it are written two words: Not Dead.  Initially Tina believes it's a sick joke perpetrated by her ex-husband, but as the incidents increase in intensity and complexity, always saying that Danny is not dead, is in pain and needs her, she finally becomes convinced Danny is indeed not dead.  With attorney she heads for the mountains and, as often with Koontz, the answer lies underground in a secret lab where decisions are made by evil men for the 'good of the nation'.   Although this is an early Koontz novel familiar themes of a hostile government, the propensity of evil to thrive in secrecy and the benevolence of mysterious forces are already here.

Dark Entries: A John Constantine Novel by Ian Rankin, art by Werther Dell'Endera

Magical jack of all trades Constantine and famous crime writer Rankin, creator of Inspector Rebus, is a mouthwatering combination and it doesn't disappoint. In Dark Entries Constantine is hired by the slick Matthew Keene when the new hottest reality TV show 'Haunted Mansion' begins to go wrong. The fame desperate kids in the Mansion are encountering hauntings the production team haven't created. So Constantine signs the waivers and goes in as a mole, but being Constantine he soon figures out the darker truth behind the hauntings, terrifying enough in themselves. Watch for when the borders of the frames turn from black to white. Rankin does a great job of keeping Constantine in character, Dell'Edera's black and white strips are stark and elegant and the whole is a brilliant indictment of the hunger for reality tv.

Ghosting by Keith Gray (AUDIO)

Sandy is a lovely fey looking medium assisted by her teenage brother Nate who narrates the story. But they are fakes, taking people's money for pretending to contact the other side and bring messages to the bereaved. But then when visiting one man's home Sandy comes across the real thing, ghosts of victims desperate to make contact. A story of terrifying retribution.

I heard this as an audio book and it is very short, it is a Barrington Stoke book, made for people with dyslexia who would have problems focussing on a longer text. As such it is really a short story, but the best kind of its kind, a ghost story that lingers in the mind and sends chills up the spine.

Breathe: A Ghost Story by Cliff McNeish

Enthralling story, on the one hand a supernatural thriller about ghosts unnaturally trapped in the new home of a young boy who has just lost his father, but also about recovery from grief and parallels between the suffocation of loss, paranormal experience and asthma. Skilfully written and moving

Second Glance by Jodi Picoult

A sad, moving book quite different from her usual gripping courtroom dramas. A bit like Shymalan's Unbreakable in that superheroes, the people who cannot be hurt, are not always like Superman, and that the past does not let go of the present. About ghosts, haunting, native american rights to land and the American eugenics movement that gave Hitler ideas about ethnic cleansing, and untimately about love and nature of suicide not as an escape but as a running to..

Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

Another book it took me a while to get round to, heavily recommended by far too many people to count. A beautiful gentle story of the death of a man who has spent his entire life working maintenance for a fairground, and the five people he meets in heaven after his death, people whose lives he has touched and affected. Joyful and affirming.

The Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks AUDIO

AZ: "On a storm-ravaged night, a 19-year-old girl is murdered. Three days later, her two younger brothers set out in search of her killer. Cole is a dark-eyed devil who doesn't care if he lives or dies; Ruben is a strange child who sometimes, inexplicably, experiences sensations above and beyond his own.

This is the story of the boys' journey from their half-gypsy home in a London junk yard to the ghostly moors of Devon, where they hope and fear to find the truth about their sister's death. It's a long road. It's the road of the dead...."

Brilliant Brooks as ever, was utterly with Cole and Rueben as they come to a small village intent on keeping its secrets, and solve the mystery of the violent death of their sister. And the elements of the supernatural are there as with his best books, not in the front but there informing the narrative.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The extended edition of Gaiman's short story in M for Magic, Gaiman is always, to me, better when he's writing for children, brilliantly imaginative and gripping

AZ: "When a baby escapes a murderer intent on killing the entire family, who would have thought it would find safety and security in the local graveyard? Brought up by the resident ghosts, ghouls and spectres, Bod has an eccentric childhood learning about life from the dead. But for Bod there is also the danger of the murderer still looking for him - after all, he is the last remaining member of the family."

Fluke by James Herbert AUDIO

I've never got on with Herbert apart from this one, the story of a man reincarntated as a dog and his journey to discover why he died.

AZ: "He was a stringy mongrel, wandering the streets of the city, driven by a ravenous hunger and hunting a quarry he could not define. But he was something more. Somewhere in the depths of his consciousness was a memory clawing its way to the surface, tormenting him, refusing to let him rest. The memory of what he had once been: A man"

Murther and Walking Spirits by Robertson Davies

AZ: "A novel involving the narrator, who has been murdered by his wife's lover, observing the follies of mankind and wreaking his revenge."

I bought this a long time ago (about '93) and finally got round to reading it. I didn't get very far the first time, found it uninteresting, but this time I was captivated and charmed. The quality of the writing is brilliant and the exploration of the family history which has been only names ot the main character Connor Gilmartin is brilliant, bringing Wales, the fledgling US and Canada together through one family tree. Reminds me of Poliakoff's Perfect Strangers in its evocation of the lives of people we know only as elderly grandparents or only in the roles of father and mother. Makes us ask uncomfortable questions about our own voyeurism.

Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

AZ: "My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer. This is Susie Salmon. Watching from heaven, Susie sees her happy, suburban family devastated by her death, isolated even from one another as they each try to cope with their terrible loss alone. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love, do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet ..."

Another one of those books everyone talks about but which I'd never got round to reading until BBC Radio 4s book group featured it today so I read for it. Accidentally brought 2 copies from charity shops. Books that make me go and cuddle my family, smell and touch, be goddamn grateful for being able to.