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Ghost Road Blues by Jonathan Maberry

Wed, 08/01/2012 - 08:33 | Robert Solka
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Ghost Road Blues Cover

Being a fan of the horror genre can be frustrating--living in a world filled with bad Hollywood remakes of great classics and series more focused on torture and gore then actually scaring anyone. So, when I picked up Ghost Road Blues, by Jonathan Maberry, I hoped it would give me that old school horror fix I’d been craving since my childhood and young adulthood spent watching the horror films of the seventies and eighties, and let’s just say I was not disappointed.

Ghost Road Blues is a story that takes place in the small town of Pine Deep, Pennsylvania, which just so happens to have the biggest Halloween celebration in the country. However, things weren’t always this commercial and light in the town which also happens to have a dark past, a serial murderer who ravaged the town before getting brought to justice, in a six-feet-under kind of way. As the festivities roll in for this year’s Halloween, their past is coming back to haunt them, and not all the monsters walking around town are working at the haunted hayride. Now, the citizens of Pine Deep have to work together to stop those trying to resurrect an ancient evil who will finish what he started thirty years ago.

Bruiser

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By Neal Shusterman

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Inexplicable events start to occur when sixteen-year-old twins Tennyson and Brontë befriend a troubled and misunderstood outcast, aptly nicknamed Bruiser, and his little brother, Cody.

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Hex Hall

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By by Rachel Hawkins

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Sophie has just been exiled to Hex Hall, a school for rebellious teens…of the supernatural sort. Witches like herself, werewolves, and even a vampire or two are her new classmates, along with a host of equally unusual teachers. As mysterious and murderous events unfold, Sophie learns about her past and a secret society that dooms them all.

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Devil's Kiss

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By by Sarwat Chadda

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Fifteen-year-old Billi SanGreal lives a dangerous life, training to be a member of Knights Templar, sworn to battle unholy evils. She also fights her father for a normal teenage life. But just when romance peeks over the horizon, a terrible ancient force returns to London and she must make the choice between the life she wants and the life she is destined for.

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Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Mon, 08/09/2010 - 07:00 | Samantha Thomason
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This is Week 10 of a 12-Week series of blog posts reviewing new young adult books. Check back each Monday for a new review.

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl is a page-turning story of star-crossed teenage love with a Southern gothic twist and a side of magic.

In the town of Gatlin, South Carolina, everyone knows everybody's business and nothing exciting ever happens, unless you count the annual re-enactment of a local Civil War battle. Unbeknownst to the residents of Gatlin (at least most residents) beneath the thick Southern accents and Spanish moss lurks a whole other magical world, one of hidden underground libraries, voodoo and deadly family curses.

Lena Duchannes and Ethan Wate bridge the gap between these two worlds - two worlds that were never meant to meet.

The Birthing House

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By Christopher Ransom

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Much to his wife's dismay, Conrad Harrison buys a large, old house in Wisconsin. After a few paranormal incidences in the new house, Conrad's wife returns to her life in California. His neighbor, Nadia claims to have been victimized by the eerie house and Conrad discovers a body hidden within his home's wall, they begin a terrifying investigation into the house's history. –Catalog Summary
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White is for Witching

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By Helen Oyeyemi

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As a child, Miranda Silver developed pica, a rare eating disorder that causes its victims to consume nonedible substances. The death of her mother when Miranda is sixteen exacerbates her condition; nothing, however, satisfies a strange hunger passed down through the women in her family. And then there’s the family house in Dover, England, converted to a bed-and-breakfast by Miranda’s father. Dover has long been known for its hostility toward outsiders. But the Silver House manifests a more conscious malice toward strangers, dispatching those visitors it despises. Enraged by the constant stream of foreign staff and guests, the house finally unleashes its most destructive power. –Book Description
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The Servants

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By Michael Marshall Smith

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For young Mark, the world has turned as bleak and gray as the Brighton winter. Separated from his real father and home in London, he's come to live with his mother and her new husband in an old house near the sea. He spends his days alone, trying to master the skateboard, while other boys his age are in school. He hates the unwanted stepfather who barged into Mark's life to rob him of joy. Worst of all, his once-vibrant mother has grown listless and weary, no longer interested in anything beyond her sitting room. But on a damp and chilly evening, an accident carries Mark into the basement flat of the old woman who lives at the bottom of his stepfather's house. She offers tea, cakes, and sympathy . . . and the key to a secret, bygone world. Mark becomes caught up in the frenetic bustle of the human machinery that once ran a home, and drawn ever deeper into a lost realm of spirits and memory. Here below the suffocating truths, beneath the pain and unhappiness, he finds an escape, and quite possibly a way to change everything. –Catalog Summary
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The Séance

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By John Harwood

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Wraxford Hall, a decaying mansion in the English countryside, has a sinister reputation. Once, a family disappeared there. And now Constance Langton has inherited this dark place as well as the mysteries surrounding it. Having grown up in a house marked by the death of her sister, Constance is no stranger to mystery, secrets, and the dark magic around us. Her father was distant. Her mother was in perpetual morning for her lost child. In a desperate attempt to coax her mother back to health, Constance took her to a seance hoping she would find supernatural comfort. But tragic consequences followed, leaving her alone in the world-- alone with Wraxford Hall. Saddled with this questionable bequest, she must find the truth at the heart of all these disappearances, apparitions, betrayal, blackmail, and villainy, even if it costs her life. –Book Description
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The House Next Door

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By Anne Rivers Siddons

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Thirtysomething Colquitt and Walter Kennedy live in a charming, peaceful suburb of newly bustling Atlanta, Georgia. Life is made up of enjoyable work, long, lazy weekends, and the company of good neighbors. Then, to their shock, construction starts on the vacant lot next door, a wooded hillside they'd believed would always remain undeveloped. Disappointed by their diminished privacy, Colquitt and Walter soon realize something more is wrong with the house next door. Surely the house can't be "haunted," yet it seems to destroy the goodness of every person who comes to live in it, until the entire heart of this friendly neighborhood threatens to be torn apart. –Catalog Summary
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