Book picks similar to
Ghost Walking by Mark Spencer


paranormal
historical-fiction
general-fiction
hauntings

The Comet Seekers


Helen Sedgwick - 2016
    And everything changes.While Róisín grew up in a tiny village in Ireland, ablaze with a passion for science and the skies and for all there is to discover about the world, François was raised by his beautiful young mother, who dreamt of new worlds but was unable to turn her back on her past.As we loop back through their lives, glimpsing each of them only when a comet is visible in the skies above, we see how their paths cross as they come closer and closer to this moment.Theirs are stories filled with love and hope and heartbreak, that show how strangers can be connected and ghosts can be real, and the world can be as lonely or as beautiful as the comets themselves.

Cid


Alexie Aaron - 2016
    His colleague Jesse Holden has hooked him up with a fill-in position on a multimillion dollar renovation on an isolated 1920s southern mansion called Hidden Meadow. The job is being run by a driven female contractor, Kiki Pickles, who specializes in renovating prewar buildings. She lets Cid know right away that she’s hired him for his carpentry skills and not as a ghost hunter. But Cid is all too aware that in the renovation of old homes, sometimes you have to deal with a myriad of pests, living and dead.Lurking at the top of the stairs is a very cranky ghost. He’s been woken up by the sound of pounding hammers and screeching tile cutters. He can’t do anything about the tools themselves, so he targets his rage at the men and women working on the mansion. Jesse is attacked in one of the three attics in Hidden Meadow and left to die. Cid arrives just in time to fight a black mass, and he surprises it with a good salting. Jesse is saved, but the ghost isn’t finished with them yet, nor is he the only entity that has been released to cause havoc in the first of the “Cid Garrett P. I.” novels.“Cid” is a standalone book written in the “Haunted Series” universe.

The Lady in the Veil


Leah Fleming - 2015
    It must have been sitting on the garage shelf for years among all the other family rejects.'When a woman finds a lost photo album in a garage clearout, she is drawn to the images of her ancestors. But one image in particular stands out: a baby sitting in the lap of its mother, both draped from head to toe in a cotton lace curtain or something, completely enveloped and unrecognizable. Who are they and what has happened to them?In a story that moves between 2012 and 1850, the shocking secrets of one family are gradually revealed …

Daughter of Providence


Julie Drew - 2011
    summer, 1934: Anne Dodge, raised by her old-money father in a small Rhode island coastal town, has always been told that her mother abandoned them. But then Anne learns that she has a half- sister, Maria Cristina --and when Maria Cristina comes to live with Anne and her father, ugly truths begin to surface about the family.Within a context of jazz, the end of Prohibition, and stifling gender expectations, Daughter of Providence is a gripping and seductive summer read. this story of loss and rediscovery will resonate with readers long after the final page.

A Shadow Beyond


Emma-Nicole Lewis - 2019
    A Shadow Beyond is a heart-rending and chilling tale of sacrifice, love, obsession and tragedy. Lost in the folds of time, behind one village's brave sacrifice, is the tragic and chilling secret of Thornycroft Hall.... Locked away in the top quarters of Thornycroft, a large house on the edge of the historic village of Eyam, is a centuries old secret. Escaping the chaos of a complicated break up, Kate Saunders travels to the Peak District to stay with her Great Aunt Edie who has suffered a fall. Thornycroft is the perfect bolthole for Kate, peaceful and providing plenty of distance from her obsessive ex. But when Kate stumbles across a diary and an ancient bogwood jewellery box in the top of the house, the tranquillity she had expected is shattered. She is shocked to discover that Edie has been tampering with the supernatural and as Kate reads the contents of the diary, the shadows of Thornycroft’s past begin to stir. Kate becomes fascinated by the history of the house and the legacy of the villagers who made a brave yet devastating decision during the outbreak of plague. The more she discovers, the more she realises that, hidden behind Eyam’s tragic story, is a dreadful family secret. Stalked by her ex and restless spirits who harbour a dark secret, Kate realises she’s in danger - not only from the living, but from the dead. As the haunting intensifies and layers of time peel away, Kate starts to uncover a chilling truth that has remained buried for centuries…

Arcadia


Lauren Groff - 2012
    Arcadia follows this lyrical, rollicking, tragic, and exquisite utopian dream from its hopeful start through its heyday and after. The story is told from the point of view of Bit, a fascinating character and the first child born in Arcadia.

Light Perpetual


Francis Spufford - 2021
    A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages—after all, everything’s been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among the shoppers were five young children. Who were they? What futures did they lose? This brilliantly constructed novel lets an alternative reel of time run, imagining the life arcs of these five souls as they live through the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the bustling immensity of twentieth-century London. Their intimate everyday dramas, as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, grandparents; as the separated, the remarried, the bereaved. Through decades of social, sexual, and technological transformation, as bus conductors and landlords, as swindlers and teachers, patients and inmates. Days of personal triumphs, disasters; of second chances and redemption. Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, Light Perpetual illuminates the shapes of experience, the extraordinariness of the ordinary, the mysteries of memory and expectation, and the preciousness of life.

One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow


Olivia Hawker - 2019
    For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn’t think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse.Losing her husband to Cora’s indiscretion is another hardship for stoic Nettie Mae. But as a brutal Wyoming winter bears down, Cora and Nettie Mae have no choice but to come together as one family—to share the duties of working the land and raising their children. There’s Nettie Mae’s son, Clyde—no longer a boy, but not yet a man—who must navigate the road to adulthood without a father to guide him, and Cora’s daughter, Beulah, who is as wild and untamable as her prairie home.Bound by the uncommon threads in their lives and the challenges that lie ahead, Cora and Nettie Mae begin to forge an unexpected sisterhood. But when a love blossoms between Clyde and Beulah, bonds are once again tested, and these two resilient women must finally decide whether they can learn to trust each other—or else risk losing everything they hold dear.

Phoenixville Rising


Robb Cadigan - 2013
    In a novel spanning centuries, and centering on three hard-luck kids, Sketch and Tara and the unforgettable Boo -- clear-eyed and reckless and insanely-loyal Boo -- Robb Cadigan gives us a timeless story of the enduring legacies of love and friendship. Noir and romantic and richly emotional, PHOENIXVILLE RISING is superb.”- William Lashner, New York Times bestselling author of the Victor Carl series and THE BARKEEPNOTHING EVER HAPPENS HERE. This is what he told himself, back when he was just a punk kid, wasting time with petty crimes and the Furnace Boys down at the abandoned steel mill. A dead-end life, sure, but he had an escape plan.UNTIL ONE FATEFUL WEEK CHANGED EVERYTHING FOREVERNow, after thirty years, he's finally coming home. To the phantoms of his own past ... and the hometown history he tried to leave behind.PHOENIXVILLE RISING: a tale of rebirth and redemption in small-town AmericaTHE PAST IS ALWAYS PRESENT IN THE TOWN CALLED PHOENIXVILLE

Grange House


Sarah Blake - 2000
    In 1896, when Maisie turns 17, her visit marks a turning point. On the morning after her arrival, local fishermen make a gruesome discovery: drowned lovers, found clasped in each other's arms. It's only the first in a series of events that casts a shadow over Maisie's summer. As she considers the attentions of two very different young men, Maisie also falls under the gaze of Miss Grange, who begins to tell her disturbing stories of her past. Rich with the details, customs, and language of the era, Grange House is a wonderfully atmospheric, page-turning novel of literary suspense and romance.

Mr. Gray (aka The Meridians)


Michaelbrent Collings - 2011
    Eight years ago, he lost his wife and child at the hands of a killer known only as Mr. Gray. But now, Mr. Gray is back, and with strange powers that allow him to appear anywhere at will. Scott must protect a new family – a woman and her autistic son – from the madman's attacks. All they can do is run...and try to find the secret behind THE MERIDIANS.

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep


Joanna Cannon - 2016
    Mrs. Creasy is missing and the Avenue is alive with whispers. The neighbors blame her sudden disappearance on the heat wave, but ten-year-olds Grace and Tilly aren’t convinced. As the summer shimmers endlessly on, the girls decide to take matters into their own hands. Inspired by the local vicar, they go looking for God—they believe that if they find Him they might also find Mrs. Creasy and bring her home.Spunky, spirited Grace and quiet, thoughtful Tilly go door to door in search of clues. The cul-de-sac starts to give up its secrets, and the amateur detectives uncover much more than ever imagined. As they try to make sense of what they’ve seen and heard, a complicated history of deception begins to emerge. Everyone on the Avenue has something to hide, a reason for not fitting in.In the suffocating heat of the summer, the ability to guard these differences becomes impossible. Along with the parched lawns and the melting pavement, the lives of all the neighbors begin to unravel. What the girls don’t realize is that the lies told to conceal what happened one fateful day about a decade ago are the same ones Mrs. Creasy was beginning to peel back just before she disappeared.

Palace of Tears


Anna King - 1998
    If finding her mother Nellie in hospital after a savage beating from her husband wasn’t enough, Emily’s plight deepens when she yields to the advances of Tommy, a young soldier, and becomes pregnant with his child.Not for nothing is Victoria station nicknamed the ‘palace of tears’. As trainloads of men leave for the Western Front, and Emily says goodbye to Tommy, she is left contemplating the life of a single mother. Yet amidst the devastation, happiness still lies within her grasp… A classic saga of World War One, Palace of Tears is a perfect read for fans of Carol Rivers, Sally Warboyes, and Annie Murray.

Goodbye, Enorma


John Locke - 2013
    Enorma, coveted by every man within 100 miles of Dodge City -- and every Indian Tribe -- is a handful in every sense of the word.

Anatomy of a Haunting: The Nightmare on Baxter Road


Lee Strong - 2013
    In 1981, Jon and Carlie Summers moved into an inherited home in rural Iowa, leaving behind their workaday lives as a lawyer and a professor in Chicago. Soon after moving in, Jon and Carlie’s lives begin a downward spiral as Carlie experiences violent dreams, possessions, hallucinations, and physical illness. Through old journals, nightmares, and personal encounters with evil, Carlie relives the history of the house, embodying its past of abuse, denial, obsession, broken lives, and death.Anatomy of a Haunting is a terrifying true story that leaves Jon dead and pushes Carlie to the brink of insanity. Through interviews and exhaustive research into the 150-year-old McPherson house, author Lee Strong delves into the history of the haunting and paints a nightmarish picture of one couple’s descent into supernatural madness.