Ghost Walls

A Southern Living Best New Book of Winter 2019; A Refinery29 Best Book of January 2019; A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 at The Week, Huffington Post, Nylon, and Lit Hub; An Indie Next Pick for January 2019 “Ghost Wall has subtlety, wit, and the force of a rock to the head: an instant classic.” —Emma Donoghue, author of Room "A worthy match for 3 a.m. disquiet, a book that evoked existential dread, but contained it, beautifully, like a shipwreck in a bottle.” —Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker A taut, gripping tale of a young woman and an Iron Age reenactment trip that unearths frightening behavior The light blinds you; there’s a lot you miss by gathering at the fireside. In the north of England, far from the intrusions of cities but not far from civilization, Silvie and her family are living as if they are ancient Britons, surviving by the tools and knowledge of the Iron Age. For two weeks, the length of her father’s vacation, they join an anthropology course set to reenact life in simpler times. They are surrounded by forests of birch and rowan; they make stew from foraged roots and hunted rabbit. The students are fulfilling their coursework; Silvie’s father is fulfilling his lifelong obsession. He has raised her on stories of early man, taken her to witness rare artifacts, recounted time and again their rituals and beliefs—particularly their sacrifices to the bog. Mixing with the students, Silvie begins to see, hear, and imagine another kind of life, one that might include going to university, traveling beyond England, choosing her own clothes and food, speaking her mind. The ancient Britons built ghost walls to ward off enemy invaders, rude barricades of stakes topped with ancestral skulls. When the group builds one of their own, they find a spiritual connection to the past. What comes next but human sacrifice? A story at once mythic and strikingly timely, Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall urges us to wonder how far we have come from the “primitive minds” of our ancestors.

In 1638, John Lewger made a home in the wilderness of the New World, in a place called Maryland. He named his house St. John's, and for nearly eighty years, it was the center of an ambitious English plan to build a new kind of community on American soil. Men and women lived and worked within its walls. Babies were born. Last breaths drawn. St. John's walls witnessed the first stirrings of the great struggles that would dominate the continent for the next three centuries: The unimaginable wealth of the New World's crops and natural resources. The promise of religious tolerance under a new model of government. The injustice of slavery. The betrayal of native peoples. The struggle for equality between men and women. If St. John's walls could have talked, they would have spoken volumes of American history. And then the walls crumbled. One hundred years after it was built, St. John's House had been abandoned. The buildings slowly deteriorated, returning to the Maryland soil to be plowed under by generations of Maryland farmers. St. John's walls were silent for more than two centuries, little more than ghosts haunting the historical and archeological records. But they weren't lost. Not entirely. Award-winning author Sally M. Walker tells the story of how teams of scientists and historians managed to hear the ghostly echoes of St. John's House and, over the course of decades of painstaking work, made them speak their stories again.

In 1638, John Lewger made a home in the wilderness of the New World, in a place called Maryland. He named his house St. John's, and for nearly eighty years, it was the center of an ambitious English plan to build a new kind of community on American soil. Men and women lived and worked within its walls. Babies were born. Last breaths drawn. St. John's walls witnessed the first stirrings of the great struggles that would dominate the continent for the next three centuries: The unimaginable wealth of the New World's crops and natural resources. The promise of religious tolerance under a new model of government. The injustice of slavery. The betrayal of native peoples. The struggle for equality between men and women. If St. John's walls could have talked, they would have spoken volumes of American history. And then the walls crumbled. One hundred years after it was built, St. John's House had been abandoned. The buildings slowly deteriorated, returning to the Maryland soil to be plowed under by generations of Maryland farmers. St. John's walls were silent for more than two centuries, little more than ghosts haunting the historical and archeological records. But they weren't lost. Not entirely. Award-winning author Sally M. Walker tells the story of how teams of scientists and historians managed to hear the ghostly echoes of St. John's House and, over the course of decades of painstaking work, made them speak their stories again.

Award-winning author Melvin Burgess's thrilling new ghost story for younger readers. David screamed and the ghostly boy opened his mouth and screamed back. But his scream wasn't the scream of a child—it was the scream of an old, old man. "Come back, come back," screamed the ghost in his cracked old voice. "Don't leave me. Don't go!" Twelve-year-old David lives with his dad in a big old apartment building called Mahogany Villas. When he discovers he can climb through the vent pipes in the building and get into other apartments and play tricks on people, he simply can't resist. His main victim is Robert Alveston, a forgetful man in his nineties who is afraid that he is losing his mind. But David's nasty pranks soon disturb more than his elderly neighbor. One day he comes face-to-face with a ghost, at first friendly but more and more terrifying as it becomes clear that he has a particular grudge against Mr Alveston. Soon both the old man and David are in great danger. "An ultimately poignant adventure that will captivate British author Burgess' fans." - Booklist

It was a warm summer day in 1951 when Rose Pottinger and Mrs. Zimmermann entered the tunnel. When they had emerged, it was snowing...and the year was 1828. Mrs. Zimmermann had felt that the ghost of Granny Wetherbee, who had taught Mrs. Zimmermann witchery, was in trouble and needed help. So she and Rose Rita had traveled to Pennsylvania where Granny had lived. They never dreamed that they would also journey back to a time long ago where they would encounter a sorcerer more terrifying than either could have imagined. Books by John Bellairs: The Doom of the Haunted Opera The Figure In the Shadows The Ghost in the Mirror The House With a Clock In Its Walls The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring The Mansion in the Mist The Specter From the Magician's Museum The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder

SPECIAL PREVIEW! “Ori’s dead because of what happened out behind the theater, in the tunnel made out of trees. She’s dead because she got sent to that place upstate, locked up with those monsters. And she got sent there because of me.” The Walls Around Us is a ghostly story of suspense told in two voices--one still living and one long dead. On the outside, there’s Violet, an eighteen-year-old dancer days away from the life of her dreams when something threatens to expose the shocking truth of her achievement. On the inside, within the walls of a girls’ juvenile detention center, there’s Amber, locked up for so long she can’t imagine freedom. Tying these two worlds together is Orianna, who holds the key to unlocking all the girls’ darkest mysteries. We hear Amber’s story and Violet’s, and through them Orianna’s, first from one angle, then from another, until gradually we begin to get the whole picture--which is not necessarily the one that either Amber or Violet wants us to see. Nova Ren Suma tells a supernatural tale of guilt and innocence, and what happens when one is mistaken for the other. Praise for Imaginary Girls: “A surreal and dreamy world where magical thinking is carried to a chilling extreme.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review Praise for 17 & Gone: “Suma’s exquisite sentence-level writing and fine eye for creepy detail are in abundant evidence.” —Kirkus Reviews

A haunting gothic tale by master mysery writer John Bellairs--soon to be a major motion picture starring Cate Blanchett and Jack Black! "The House With a Clock in Its Walls will cast its spell for a long time."--The New York Times Book Review When Lewis Barnavelt, an orphan. comes to stay with his uncle Jonathan, he expects to meet an ordinary person. But he is wrong. Uncle Jonathan and his next-door neighbor, Mrs. Zimmermann, are both magicians! Lewis is thrilled. At first, watchng magic is enough. Then Lewis experiments with magic himself and unknowingly resurrects the former owner of the house: a woman named Selenna Izard. It seems that Selenna and her husband built a timepiece into the walls--a clock that could obliterate humankind. And only the Barnavelts can stop it!