I picked up a copy of Dracula: The Un-Dead with a mixture of trepidation and anticipation, but when I got to the part in the dust jacket description which said that the story incorporated the historical Vlad Dracula, I was sold. I’ve had a fascination with the infamous warrior prince since I first learned of him in a library book back in elementary school, when I was about 9 or 10 years old. Since then, I’ve read and watched countless items that made any reference to him. I don’t know what it is. It’s not like I’m attracted to other violent, enigmatic figures in history. And my interest in him predates, and was arguably the catalyst for, my eventual fondness for vampires. It also predates his popularity, even though now most people have at least heard of Vlad and many are even more obsessed than I am. But while I don’t know why it is that I’m so fascinated, but I am, and so I couldn’t resist this book, a modern interpretation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which takes place a quarter century after the events which transpired in the classic novel. Oh, and it’s written by his great-grandnephew, Dacre Stoker (who, I was a little surprised and disconcerted to learn from the author blurb, lives in South Carolina – I fully expected him to reside somewhere on the wild and rocky coast of England) and Ian Holt, a vampire aficianado and Dracula historian.

Okay. Confession time. I have not read Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Yes, I know, I can hear the gasps of shock and howls of protest right now. But honestly, it’s never appealed to me. I tried to read it in junior high, and by that time I’d seen more than my share of vampire movies and Stoker’s version didn’t hold much allure, since I knew the story already (or thought I did) from the celluloid versions. Admittedly, now I know different, but I’ve still never read it. That’s not to say I never will, but it’s not high on my list.

So I had to own up to not reading the classic since a lot of the negative criticism for Dracula: The Un-Dead is for taking the original story and changing things so much that it’s an insult to Stoker’s masterpiece. Well, as someone who hasn’t read Stoker’s book but familiar with the plot, I disagree. I thought the updates and reasons for their changes made sense and made the story that much more interesting, rather than just a straightforward tale of good versus evil. And I was always confused by the ending in the original Dracula, since the supposed death of Dracula seemed to go against what Stoker (and the folklore from which he drew inspiration) claimed would kill a vampire. A knife? Huh? The ending of the original Dracula seemed ripe for a sequel. So here we have one. Admittedly, there’s a lot going on in it, a bit too much for my liking. Besides continuing the original story, we also have storylines featuring Elizabeth Bathory and Jack the Ripper. Dracula himself is more a supporting character than the star of the show – which, for this fan, was the most disappointing aspect of the book. I didn’t really care about all that other stuff, even though they do a decent job of keeping things going at a fast pace.

The book is primed for a sequel, and the authors make reference to at least one being in the works in their endnotes. There are a few details referred to in the book that aren’t answered and the ending itself is most definitely set up for more to come. I hope Dracula returns to his rightful spot at center stage. And yes, I will be reading the sequel to the sequel.

I was eagerly anticipating the arrival of Sarah Waters’ newest book, The Little Stranger, since its publication date was first announced. Our library was due to get a copy and so I waited … and waited … and waited some more. It never came and finally, after an agonizing six weeks, whereupon I’d gaze longingly at the book whenever I entered a bookstore, I gave up waiting, gave into temptation, and bought myself a copy. A girl can only resist for so long.

Since first reading Affinity several years ago, Sarah Waters has been on my list of favorite authors. Each book that she writes is different from the last, and The Little Stranger is no exception, although I would argue that this is probably her biggest departure to date. The Little Stranger is a chilling horror story in the grand tradition of The Turn of the Screw and The Haunting of Hill House and is every bit as frightening. I’ve said before that it can be difficult to write a really good ghost story, and it’s true, but in this case, Waters’ ability to evoke atmosphere while practicing restraint has created an eerie story that will keep your nerves taut and your emotions on edge from the very first page.

Dr. Faraday is a middle-aged bachelor and a doctor, operating a general practice in a small town in post-World War II England. As a young boy, he visited grand Hundreds Hall, where his mother was a nursemaid, and now goes about his work in the shadow of this house, a country estate whose glory days are long past. One day, he is called to the hall to see to a sick servant girl, and so begins a tale that has as many dark corners and twisting turns as the house itself.

Hundreds Hall and its surrounding community is an apt example of the decline of the British class system and the state of the country after the war, with the hall becoming a sad ghost of its former self, through neglect and lack of money. Land is sold and parcelled out for subdivision-style housing, and the inhabitants must adjust to their new reality, some with more difficulty than others, and watching them cling to their more grandiose past is both painful and pathetic. Dr. Faraday is also a figure of pity mixed with a bit of scorn, with his sychophantic tendencies doing battle with the more morose aspects of his character. But one has to wonder, is it them or the house?

There are many more elements which make The Little Stranger such a rich reading experience; however, it’s difficult to write too much about this book without giving away any of its secrets, of which there are many. So in an effort not to spoil this wonderful book for other readers, I will avoid going into any more detail. Suffice it to say that if you like a good ghost story, if you enjoy reading about the time period in which this book takes place, or if you are a fan of Sarah Waters, you will want to read this book, with its haunting story that lingers with you long after the last page is turned.

I’ve had John Harwood’s The Séance on my list of ‘must reads’ since first learning the author of The Ghost Writer was coming out with a new novel. His first novel offered enough chills and thrills that I eagerly expected the same reaction to his second work, particularly with that title and the jacket blurb promising “apparitions, of disappearances and unnatural phenomena, of betrayal and blackmail and black-hearted villains.”

Constance, a young woman in Victorian England, lives a solitary childhood, her only company besides a pair of elderly servants is her depressed mother, a woman still mourning the death of her other daughter many years earlier. It is her mother’s pain that compels Constance to enter the world of Victorian spiritualism, and sets in motion a series of events that will lead her to explore the past and face her deepest fears.

Although I didn’t find the story as personally frightening as The Ghost Writer, The Séance is a fabulous Victorian mystery with all the requisite elements, including chimeric spiritualists, eccentric characters, a gloomy mansion and plenty of foreboding. The Séance delivers on its promise and I can’t wait to read Harwood’s next book.

Oh yes, and although I believe The Séance was originally published in Harwood’s native Austrialia in 2008, it only became available in the United States earlier this month, so The Séance marks my first foray into The 2009 Pub Challenge.

Earlier this month, Heather wrote about a book called The Man in the Picture on her blog, A High and Hidden Place. The cover art caught my eye, and then when I saw that it was written by Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black, I knew I had to get it, and it would be the perfect book to read by the fire on a cold winter’s night. Well, I didn’t get the cold part, since it’s been in the 50s here at night (the teens for you Celsius folk) but I did get a great fireside tale.

Oliver is visiting his old Cambridge professor, Theo, who has a tale to tell, or rather, a desire to unburden himself of a sinister story. A Venetian painting of a carnival scene is the subject of this tale of horror, and Hill once again creates a world that shimmers with foreboding and menace. She perfectly captures the essence of a horror story without cutting any corners or taking any cheap shots, and succeeds in giving the reader – in this case, me – a full-bodied reading experience in a single evening by the fire.

 I have wanted to read Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill ever since first seeing the book’s cover art in the bookstore, long before I knew he was Stephen King’s son (which really wasn’t a selling point with me anyway), but I don’t read a lot of horror fiction, so I had to be in the right mood and I figured Halloween was the perfect time. My fatal mistake was in reading, and worse, believing the reviews and blurbs that praised this book. I settled into it one night expecting it to scare the socks off me. Well, not so much. The premise is a promising one, aging rock star buys a haunted suit whose ghost proceeds to terrorize said rock star. And there were moments, fleeting ones, where I felt the twinge of fear prickle my skin, but those moments never fully actualized into fright. I wasn’t scared to look over my shoulder or stare down our dark hallway. I never had to put the book down, too frightened to keep reading.

So, while I thought it was a very well written book, and one that I enjoyed as a good story that kept me entertained from start to finish, for me it lacked that fear factor of a truly great ghost story.

Although I didn’t count it as one of my choices for Carl’s RIP III Challenge (I read it before October 31st but I’d already completed the challenge), Heart-Shaped Box won the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel, so it does count as one of my selections for the Book Awards Reading Challenge.

What would be an appropriate reading choice coming off my last book about a woman hiking the Appalachian Trail alone? Why, a book about a little girl who gets lost on the trail and ends up in the stuff of nightmares, of course! Stephen King’s short novel, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, was recommended to me by a friend at the library, who said it was so scary it kept her up at night. Now, it’s been about fifteen or twenty years since I’ve read anything by Stephen King (boy, am I getting old!) and I probably would have gone another fifteen or twenty if it wasn’t for this friend’s enthusiastic recommendation, plus the fact that the AT factored into the story. I took it with me went we went on a mini-vacation to Savannah and Tybee Island, Georgia for the Memorial Day weekend, and read it over the course of a couple evenings.

The girl in the title is Trisha McFarland, a mature-beyond-her-years 9-year-old, whose mother is trying to bond with Trisha and her older brother in the aftermath of a painful divorce. To that end, their mother takes them on a day-hike on the Appalachian Trail in the Maine woods near their home. As her brother and mother engage themselves in one of their typical arguments, ignoring Trisha, she ventures off-trail to pee – and then can’t find her way back. Thus begins a surreal, nightmarish experience that would have most adults huddled up in a quivering ball of fear, let alone a lost child alone. But Trisha is resourceful, intelligent, and has no small amount of sheer guts, and so she makes her way through the woods, trying to find her way back to civilization, knowing that something is stalking her, something that is playing with her and biding its time until it is ready.

There are some truly scary moments in this novel, including a feverish dream involving robed priest-like figures, and I think if I had been reading this book in front of a fire in a cabin in the woods, rather than on the deck of a beach house at sunset as the ocean breeze wafted over me, I would have been really frightened, and probably would have had nightmares myself. As it was, I was completely caught up in the story, entertained through to the very end, and it was a very favorable revisit to the mind of Stephen King. Take this one with you the next time you go camping and prepare to be afraid, be very afraid.

Last summer when I worked at a library, the literary buzz in the circulation room was all about The Ruins. My coworkers would exclaim over it in hushed tones, asking others if they’d read it and had they reached such-and-such point, and could they believe what was going on in this book? So of course, I added it to my wishlist, and there it’s stayed – until yesterday. I stopped by my local library and saw a copy on the New Fiction shelf and decided now was as good a time as any to find out what all the fuss was about.

Well, let me tell you. This book will give you the creeps, it will scare the beejeezus out of you, it will have your stomach tensed up throughout its 300+ chapterless pages as you read voraciously to the last one. At least, that was my reaction.

Two couples, college graduates, are enjoying an idyllic vacation in Cancún, Mexico. They befriend some fellow tourists, a trio of Greek men and one German. To liven things up, the couples agree to join the German in his search into the Mexican jungle for his estranged brother. What they find is beyond their wildest imaginations, their worst fears, as they slowly realize the horror surrounding them and the extent to which it is capable.

This is the type of book that once it gets made into a movie (which it almost surely will be – it’s the perfect summer horror flick), people will be spilling their popcorn as they jump in fright, clutching onto the person next to them. It’s long on effect, but rather short on plot. I finished the book wondering still wondering what, why and how, and wishing Smith had eased up on the scare factor long enough to explain some of his creations. Still, I’m glad I read it and can understand what had my former coworkers all fired up – I just wish I’d read it in time to join in on the fun.

I’m being lax in my reading again – but this time I have a valid reason: we finally found a house! Yes, no more living in my sister-in-law’s basement apartment (as good as it was of them to let us stay there for a couple months); we are homeless no more. We’re living just south of Atlanta and have spent the last couple of weeks getting packed, organized, and performing all of the tasks associated with a real estate purchase and have been busy indeed. So soon I will be surrounded by all of my books once again, and I will be a very happy bibliophile.

Now, I was about two or three chapters away from finishing The Last Days of Dogtown, a book I was enjoying very much, but it was inadvertently packed away and I have no idea where. So that will have to wait until I happen to come across it in my unpacking (ugh, I hate moving). In the meantime, I did have a few books left out, one of which was a psychological thriller/horror book, called Come Closer. I can’t remember how I came to know about this book, but it’s one that I had on my wishlist and was given to me for my birthday. It’s a slim volume, and so I was able to finish it in one sitting, the perfect time frame for a scary story.

On its face, it’s the deceptively simple tale of Amanda, an urban professional married and living an ideal life. But slowly, that life begins to unravel as she becomes possessed by Naamah, an ancient demon. The conflict and growing awareness by Amanda that something is not right, that things you think are impossible are actually true, is compelling. Is she insane or truly tormented? That’s for the reader to decide – either way, it’s frightening to see her fate unfold.

In my opinion, a good ghost story is difficult to pull off. Too often, the story veers off into lurid gore, overdone camp, or worse, sheer boredom. Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black succeeds where so many others fail, writing a truly frightening tale of a haunting in the remote northern reaches of England in the early 20th century.

Arthur Kipps, middle-aged and living with his second wife and her children, revisits his youth when, as a young solicitor (apparently a dangerous job for British males, at least in novels), he is sent to the village of Crythin Gifford to oversee the processing of an elderly widow’s estate. Strange things begin happening, a malevolent woman in black appears, and Kipps is drawn into a terrifying experience that reaches far beyond the village.

This was a story that had me having to force myself to keep my eyes on the page I was reading, resisting the urge to skip ahead just to end the anxiety and dread each bump, each scream, each murky mist brought to my mind. Hill’s ominous foreshadowing begins from the very first pages, giving the reader a old-fashioned ghost story that had enough atmosphere and chills in an understated horror novel that doesn’t disappoint. The comparisons to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House are apt and well-deserved.

Earlier this week I finished up The Tooth Fairy, my first book as part of the RIP Challenge. I’ve read a couple of Joyce’s other books (namely Dark Sister and The Limits of Enchantment) and really enjoyed them. I’ve had Tooth Fairy sitting on my bookshelf for ages, and just never got around to reading it. I figured the challenge was a perfect opportunity to remedy that.

The story takes place in a provincial English town, circa late 1960s and focuses on three young boys, Sam, Clive and Terry, and their journey from childhood to young men. One night, Sam places a tooth under his pillow and wakes up to find the tooth fairy in his room. But this is no tinkerbell, bippity-boppity-boo type fairy. Instead, Sam sees a troll-like creature, reeking of earthy odors. The tooth fairy is menacing, malicious and quite scary. As Sam grows up, the fairy continues to visit him, changing its form and influencing events and people in Sam’s life. Their relationship is at the heart of the novel, complemented by Sam’s personal development, all wrapped in a tense, sometimes terrifying, package.

This is part coming-of-age story, part fantasy, part horror novel, and a great tale. My only complaint is with the ending, which is a bit too pat for my liking. Still, he’s an author I heartily recommend and this book is no exception.

I’ve decided to replace one of my challenge book selections with The Thirteenth Tale, since I got an ARC copy through BookCrossing, but I’ve decided to save it until last, since I don’t want to end up in the same situation that Heather did after reading it. So next up is Sleep, Pale Sister – another book I’ve been meaning to read for quite some time.