Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories: How Peter Parley Laid a Ghost

The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories: Volume One
by Tara Moore (Editor)
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781943910564
Publication Date: January 1, 2016
Pages: 291
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, Historical
Publisher: Valancourt Books

The first-ever collection of Victorian Christmas ghost stories, culled from rare 19th-century periodicals

During the Victorian era, it became traditional for publishers of newspapers and magazines to print ghost stories during the Christmas season for chilling winter reading by the fireside or candlelight. Now for the first time thirteen of these tales are collected here, including a wide range of stories from a diverse group of authors, some well-known, others anonymous or forgotten. Readers whose only previous experience with Victorian Christmas ghost stories has been Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” will be surprised and delighted at the astonishing variety of ghostly tales in this volume.

My first thought as I started reading this – a story aimed at Victorian children – was that the writing shines a sorry light on the state of today’s education. I doubt many children today would be able to pass a reading comprehension quiz based on this story, purely based on the vocabulary. I could be wrong, but the writing here is certainly more sophisticated than that of most of today’s books aimed at adults.

How Peter Parley Laid a Ghost by Anonymous was better than Conan Doyle’s Captain of the Pole-Star; more interesting, amusing, and frankly, better written. But it’s still not a true ghost story; it’s a morality tale aimed at the folly of superstition. In this context, it’s a brilliant story; in the context of a spooky ghost story … not so much.

Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, Vol 1: The Captain of the “Pole-star”

The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories: Volume One
by Tara Moore (Editor)
Rating: ★★½
isbn: 9781943910564
Publication Date: January 1, 2016
Pages: 291
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, Historical
Publisher: Valancourt Books

The first-ever collection of Victorian Christmas ghost stories, culled from rare 19th-century periodicals

During the Victorian era, it became traditional for publishers of newspapers and magazines to print ghost stories during the Christmas season for chilling winter reading by the fireside or candlelight. Now for the first time thirteen of these tales are collected here, including a wide range of stories from a diverse group of authors, some well-known, others anonymous or forgotten. Readers whose only previous experience with Victorian Christmas ghost stories has been Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” will be surprised and delighted at the astonishing variety of ghostly tales in this volume.

I love me some Conan Doyle, but not this one. I’m not a fan of Arctic settings, nor of stories that take place at sea, so this was a double whammy against me liking it. Add to that, it isn’t really a spooky ghost story, so much as a second hand account of ghost sightings and their results.

In my opinion, Conan Doyle’s The Haunted Grange of Grosthorpe is a far superior ghost story.

Synchronized Sorcery (Witchcraft Mystery, #11)

Synchronized Sorcery
by Juliet Blackwell
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9780593097953
Series: Witchcraft Mystery #11
Publication Date: July 6, 2021
Pages: 335
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Berkley

Strange things are happening in Lily Ivory’s San Francisco. First, she finds a vintage mermaid costume which dates from the 1939 San Francisco’s Treasure Island World’s Fair – and which gives off distinctly peculiar vibrations. Next, she stumbles upon a dead man in the office of her predecessor, and as the community’s new leader, she feels compelled to track down the culprit. Just when Lily thinks things can’t get any stranger, a man appears claiming to be her half-brother, spouting ideas about the mystical prophecy involving San Francisco and their family…

When the dead man is linked to the mysterious mermaid costume, and then yet another victim is found on Treasure Island, Lily uncovers ties between the long-ago World’s fair and the current murders, and begins to wonder whether the killer might be hiding in plain sight. But unless Lily can figure everything out in time, there may be yet another body floating in San Francisco Bay.

I don’t know if this just wasn’t one of her best ones, or I just wasn’t feeling it. Things at work have been pretty damn dismal the last couple of weeks, so it’s entirely possible it was just my sour mood colouring my enjoyment of a normally favorite series. But there was a little something; some slowness, or lack of focus, to the plot, that kept me from really losing myself in it. And her familiar was acting like a spoiled brat throughout the book, something that at the best of times I have no patience with.

But still, probably more me than the book.

The Cats Came Back (Magical Cats Mystery, #10)

The Cats Came Back
by Sofie Kelly
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9780399584596
Series: Magical Cats Mystery #10
Publication Date: January 1, 2018
Pages: 294
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Berkley

This is an adorably fun series about two magical cats and a likeable group of humans, but this entry was very average for me, mainly because I anticipated every plot development and who the murderer was well before it’s reasonable to have guessed.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got to say – it’s not a bad read, it just wasn’t as cleverly plotted as others in the series.

Charleston Green (Tipsy Collins, #1)

Charleston Green
by Stephanie Alexander
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9781647040505
Series: Tipy Collins #1
Publication Date: April 14, 2020
Pages: 352
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Bublish

I BookLikes friend read and rated this highly recently, and I’m always onboard for a ghost story-mystery set in Charleston. Her standards are far more exacting than mine, so I felt confident buying it and its sequel the other day

Unfortunately, I can’t say I loved it. I’m conflicted about even saying I liked it, although it was a good, well-written story, with the exception of a few formatting errors and at least a couple of grammatical ones, though still fewer of both than I normally find in most traditionally published books.

At first I thought the problem for me was the third person present POV. In my opinion it’s the least forgiving POV available to authors and as such very hard to get right. Done wrong, characters are flat and lifeless.

But the characters weren’t flat and lifeless. Except for the main one, Tipsy herself, and ultimately this was what held me back from completely enjoying this book. She was a dishrag, and not just because she’d just gone through a difficult divorce, but because she’d been something of a dishrag her whole life. Not a victim, not even a doormat, but just a non-entity. A time or two she caught fire and those moments were ones I enjoyed thoroughly, but they happened way too rarely to make up for all the rest of the book, where she just drifted through.

On the plus side, the ghosts were great, and I enjoyed the parts where Tipsy painted, likely because they were the only times she wasn’t passive. But I truly enjoyed the story behind the ghosts and the mystery of how they died.

I was prepared to jump directly into the second book, Haint Blue, but I flipped through it this morning, and caught a passage that’s completely turned me off. It’s obvious that the author’s need to write as true to life as possible means taking the reader on the same emotional roller coaster of relationships that most people would give a kidney to avoid experiencing in real life, but are bound to go through anyway. Bound to or not in real life, I’m not obligated to experience it again in my books, and the passage that caught my eye has Tipsy acting like a melodramatic teen. No, thank you. Maybe someday, but for now I’m stopping with Charleston Green and calling it good.

I read this because it looked good, but I’m also using it for Halloween Bingo 2021 on my Murder Most Foul square.

Independent Bones (Sarah Booth Delaney, #23)

Independent Bones
by Carolyn Haines
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781250257871
Series: Sarah Booth Delaney #23
Publication Date: May 18, 2021
Pages: 357
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Whew – I had concerns after the last book, Garland of Bones, was such a poor entry to what is normally a reliable series.

This one starts right off with a bang – a rather graphic display of domestic violence at the grand opening of Zinnia’s new public park, during a speech by a professor passionate about women’s rights. The next day, the abuser is found dead, and the police find two other murders with the exact same MO in two other cities, and the professor is a suspect in all of them.

The fight-the-patriarchy rhetoric was strong, and at times, way too thickly laid on. Given Sarah Booth and Tinkie’s apathy for their client, the professor, I think it was done on purpose with the idea of illustrating that too much of anything – good or bad – can have disastrous consequences. This made the rhetoric, which was mostly in the first half of the book, at least useful to the plot. It still detracted from my enjoyment overall though.

What I did appreciate an awful lot, along with the faster pace and the lighter tone, was that the author also took the time to point out that the characters series readers know and love already have quietly, and in their own unique way, ‘fought the patriarchy’ and carved out their own independence and power. Balance.

Sarah’s resident haint, Jitty, also played a far less annoying part that usual; Sarah Booth has finally, after 22 books, stopped being taken in like an idiot, by her frequent appearances as historical figures. This time around, the figures she appears as are all powerful women throughout American history, who fought the constraints of their times to achieve agency over their own lives. And all of them outlaws. One of the messages being, that before our current generations, the only way women had their own agency was to be outlaws, in one way or another. These interludes were interesting and I found myself far less impatient with them than I’ve been in the past. They felt less silly and more relevant.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that for the last few years the writing has been on the wall for American women, as the feeble, power-hungry men we helped elect have been systematically making noise about taking away a woman’s agency, but the timing of this plot feels especially prescient, as the publication of this book came almost at the exact same time as events in Texas unfolded. Because behind the scenes of this story is a new, secret, well-funded, political movement unfolding across the US, with the goal of unwinding the rights of women back to pre 1900’s, where women couldn’t work any meaningful jobs, or have control of their finances, never mind their bodies, and their husbands were legally free to ‘correct’ their behaviour as they saw fit. That bit of the story doesn’t end with a tied-up bow and a justice-wins-the-day at the end, which is fitting. The pendulum of humanity swings wide, but slow.

I read this book for Halloween Bingo 2021’s Dem Bones square. Every book in the series has “Bones” in the title, and a skeleton, or part of one, on the cover.

Like a Charm

Like a Charm
by Candace Havens
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9780425219263
Publication Date: February 5, 2008
Pages: 289
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction
Publisher: Berkley

I’ve had a few books by Candace Havens on the shelves for over a decade, and the other night I decided I had to re-read them; I remembered the broad strokes, but not much else. I started with this one, Like a Charm and it held up surprisingly well, for the kind of story it is.

Like a Charm is a paranormal romance, but really the romance is only about half the story, the rest is about the MC, Kira, picking herself up and putting herself back together after a horrific work related experience that left her traumatised and seriously ill. She goes back to her hometown and reconnects with the residents and her family, and while she’s there, the town librarian dies, a woman who was like a second mom to her. Kira is bequeathed an extraordinary inheritance, and must weight accepting it against going back to her highly successful law career.

Of course that other half of the story is Caleb. Caleb has all the requirements of a romantic hero: of course he’s hot, and he’s a carpenter, BUT only on the side, when he’s not running around the world being a highly successful investigative reporter, and of course he’s rich, although you’d never know it unless he’s in a suit. And of course he’s a gentleman of the southern variety, holding doors, paying for everything – but only in the most enlightened and charming fashion. I’m used to this sort of stuff in what few romances I read, and I accept that it’s a winning formula for a reason. But where things got really out-of-date, was the whole first time in bed scene. It was just soooo cheesy.

As is obvious, I enjoyed the non-romantic half more. It was largely an ode to books and libraries and the book-title-author name dropping was fun. It was a light, fun read that went fast.

I’ve decided to use this for the Raven/Free Square on my Halloween Bingo 2021 card. It’s full of magic and I-see-dead-people and is set in a small town run and protected by a coven of witches.

The Alchemist’s Illusion

The Alchemist's Illusion
by Gigi Pandian
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9780738753010
Series: Accidental Alchemist #4
Publication Date: February 1, 2019
Pages: 329
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Midnight Ink

I read this book while I read two other supernatural books at the same time, and now my thoughts are all muddled. But for the most part it’s a slightly better than average cozy paranormal mystery.

Zoe’s an alchemist that accidentally stumbled on the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life centuries ago and has been hiding her true nature ever since. Her best friend is a gargoyle that received the elixir of life from someone practicing backward alchemy a hundred years ago who got by before meeting Zoe by being a French chef to the blind. There’s a lot to like in the premise of this book and series, if you like that sort of thing (and I do).

Zoe apprenticed under Nicholas Flamel and his wife, both of whom disappeared centuries ago and were presumed dead, but Zoe had begun having suspicions when she stumbled across a painting of the two of them – something she knew they never allowed.

What follows would be a great story if not for Zoe’s over-riding angst colouring the whole story. Constant worrying about being found out; her other best friend being railroaded for a crime he didn’t commit because of his race; her gargoyle being discovered; her boyfriend not believing her. The list is sort of exhaustive, and reading about it is exhaustive. Beyond that is a really interesting story about hiding in plain sight, and the corruption of desire in a life lived too long.

This book culminates in a few secrets being revealed, so I can only hope the next book will be a lot less angsty and a lot more pure fun.

I read this book for 2021 Halloween Bingo’s Genre: Mystery square. Underneath all the gargoyles and alchemists, there’s a murder mystery to be solved.

Wild Ride

Wild Ride
by Bob Mayer, Jennifer Crusie
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9780312533779
Publication Date: March 15, 2010
Pages: 351
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

This was the last book Jennifer Crusie wrote that I hadn’t yet read (except for the Temptation books; I started Welcome to Temptation and something turned me off and I never finished it). It’s a co-wriiten book with Bob Meyer, and their previous effort Agnes and the Hitman is one of my all time favourite good-time reads.

But I avoided this one for years because I’m not a fan of carnivals and amusement parks as story settings. Stephen King might have ruined this for me, but there’s just something WAY too creepy and seedy about them in books. Nevertheless, I had bought this and after years of languishing in a forgotten corner of the TBR, I found it just in time for Halloween Bingo, and the setting was perfect.

Mary Alice (Mab) is just finishing up a massive restoration of an early 1920’s amusement park, putting on one of the last touches, when she’s attacked by a giant iron clown that calls her by name. The owners of the park seen unsurprised, though they pass it off as a hallucination. Soon, however, there’s no escaping the truth: the park is the prison for 5 untouchable demons (all from the Etruscan mythology, it seems) and two have escaped. It’s up to Mab and her fellow Guardia to re-capture them and keep the other three from escaping.

Believe me when I say there is nothing deep or philosophical about this book. It’s pure silliness and funnel cake fun. It’s not nearly as well plotted or written as Agnes and the Hitman, but it’s well written enough that it kept me reading and the eye rolling only happened a few times.

I doubt I’ll ever re-read this again, though it did make me want to climb that ladder to grab Agnes for a re-read.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2021. It’s a perfect fit for the Creepy Carnivals square, which is really my Stone Cold Horror square – I used my Transfiguration Spell card, as it’s chock full of demons (including minions that possess teddy bears and characters ripped completely from Small World) and it takes place entirely within the grounds of the Fun Fun Amusement Park.

The Once and Future Witches

The Once and Future Witches
by Alix E. Harrow
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9780356512471
Publication Date: October 15, 2001
Pages: 517
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Orbit

In 1893, there's no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.

But when the three Eastwood sisters join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten ways that might turn the women's movement into the witch's movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote - and perhaps not even to live - the sisters must delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.

There's no such thing as witches. But there will be.

I loved The Ten Thousand Doors of January and bought this off the back of that love, looking to re-capture the magical writing and story telling.

It both did and it didn’t. The writing is just as magical, and I have not a doubt that many others will find the story just as captivating, but unfortunately I didn’t. Not because it wasn’t good – it was. It’s theme just didn’t ring my bell. I had decided to DNF it after 200 pages or so, but instead I decided to skim-read the rest, knowing I’d be disappointed and always wondering if I didn’t.

I dislike stories that pit women against men, that reduce history down to all women are down-trodden and abused and all men are evil, and this story does almost exactly that. One woman in this book was against suffrage, except she wasn’t, and exactly two male characters were anything more than drunken, abusive and evil.

If I could subtract that dynamic from the story, while keeping the story itself, somehow (impossible, really), I’d have found the story magical. I couldn’t help but like Bella, Agnes and James Juniper, and the sense of place was astonishingly vivid. The magical workings and the ties to fairy tales and nursery rhymes works beautifully. Ultimately, there are not a lot of fellow readers I’d not recommend this book to. Except me. And that’s ok; while I’m certain it won’t be a book I’ll ever pick up again, I’m not sorry that I persevered rather than DNF’ing it.

I read this for Halloween Bingo 2021’s Spellbound square. It’s a perfect fit for the square: books containing witches, warlocks, sorcerers and witchcraft.