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12 Strange and Supernatural Observations Ch. After hearing the boys' tale, Amy and Megan, along with their friends, decide to investigate the sordid history of the house, solve the mystery of the boys' encounter, and possibly find a lost treasure. Halloween is fast approaching in the small town of Ten Mile when their friend Maisy's two curious brothers enter the deserted Harwood Mansion and encounter someone who may actually be a ghost. When they're not spending time with their family, doing chores, or working on homework, Amy and Megan are busy putting their imaginations to work and creating their own adventures while leading the 301 Club. If you're looking for a book for this Halloween, this is the one you should choose. While it is the same story, the changes provide the reader with different circumstances, additional chapters, and an alternate ending. The third edition of The Mystery on Glendale Drive replaces the first edition in more ways than one. Of the two, I enjoyed The Ghost Writer more (I loved the ghost stories in that one) but both are very creepy, very gothic and perfect books to read at this time of year.Paperback. The Séance is the second book I’ve read by John Harwood the first was The Ghost Writer, which I read almost exactly a year ago. I reached down for my tablet and, as I straightened, saw a light spring up in the window immediately above the main entrance As the moon rose higher, the proportions of the house appeared to alter until it loomed above me like a precipice.
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Minute by minute, the clearing brightened the Hall seemed to be inching its way upward out of darkness. The air was still and cold somewhere in the distance a fox barked, but no answering cry arose from the blackness opposite. But although the characters could have been stronger, the real heart of the novel is the house, Wraxford Hall, which is almost a character in itself.Ībout thirty yards from the house I stumbled over the remnant of a low stone wall, where I settled myself with my tablet and pencils. I also thought the voices of the different narrators could have been more distinctive (this is an area where Wilkie Collins really excels but where so many other authors seem to have difficulties).
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This made Constance feel slightly disconnected from the other two narrators and she didn’t seem such a vital part of the novel as Montague and Eleanor. The villain was very easy to identify though! The changing viewpoints were handled well, and the author chose the right points to end one character’s narrative and move onto the next – although there was such a long gap between Constance’s two narratives that by the time I came to the second one I’d almost forgotten about her. The plot does start to become very complicated – much more complicated than it needed to be, in my opinion – but it does keep the reader guessing and wondering what the next plot twist will be.
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Harwood’s writing is not as flowery and descriptive as a typical Victorian author but at the same time he perfectly captures the mood and tone of a piece of 19th century writing. I would be very surprised if Collins is not one of John Harwood’s influences, but there are shades of other Victorian gothic/sensation fiction writers too. There’s even a haunted suit of armour! The story is told in the form of the various characters’ narratives, letters and journal entries – a style reminiscent of The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, for example. The book was published in 2008 but has everything you’d expect to find in a Victorian ghost story or sensation novel: a derelict mansion said to be haunted, bad weather (complete with thick fog, heavy rain, howling winds and dramatic thunderstorms), wills and inheritances, dangerous scientific experiments, mesmerism, spiritualism, mysterious disappearances, ghostly apparitions and family secrets. The Séance is a wonderfully atmospheric gothic mystery set in Victorian England. It’s not surprising that Constance is advised to “sell the Hall unseen burn it to the ground and plough the earth with salt if you will but never live there…” The dark secrets of the Hall’s sinister past are revealed to the reader through the narratives of Constance, Montague and another young woman, Eleanor Unwin, whose fate also becomes linked with the house. Alone in the world, Constance is contacted by solicitor John Montague and learns of an inheritance connecting her with Wraxford Hall, a crumbling manor house surrounded by gloomy woods. Unfortunately though, Constance’s decision has tragic consequences that she couldn’t have foreseen. She has her doubts as to whether it’s really possible to summon spirits, but she hopes it might offer her mother some comfort. When Constance Langton’s little sister Alma dies, she takes her grieving mother to a séance.