I am a sucker for a good ghost story. I don't necessarily mean a scary story, just stories with ghosts in them. I once read a book where a child was haunted by the ghost of another child who died on the Titanic. Through information provided by the ghost, they were able to expose the child's mother for abandoning him to save herself. I have no idea what the title was, but if it sounds familiar to anyone let me know. I've found a few books that stand out featuring ghosts.Jodi Picoult's Second Glance brings a ghost hunter with a death wish to a rural Vermont town where a ghost helps him expose the shameful eugenics experiments conducted on the local Abenaki Indian tribe in the 1930's as well as uncover a murder. This is the only book I ever read by Picoult and as far as I can tell, the rest are nothing like this one. People often recommend her other work to me, but I just can't get over the lack of ghosts.
The Mercy of Thin Air by Ronlyn Domingue features the ghost of Raziela "Razi" Nolan, a young woman who died in 1928 when she slipped on the side of a swimming pool, bumping her head and then drowning. Razi follows a young couple home from a yard sale when they buy a bookcase that once belonged to Razi's fiance. Razi tells us the story of her life and how she wonders whatever happened to her beloved Andrew. Razi watches as the young couple, Amy and Scott begin to have problems. It turns out that Amy lost her fiance years before in a car accident and is having difficulty dealing with it now that she and Scott are thinking of starting a family. In the end we find out that Razi and Amy share a common connection.
Stephen King's Bag of Bones features both a good ghost and several bad ones trying to get revenge on a mean old man who did them wrong. Writer Mike Noonan retreats to his lake front home in Maine after the sudden death of his wife. Once there, he encounters a young girl and her mother living in a trailer park. The girl is the granddaughter of the richest man in those parts. He had disapproved of his son's relationship with a woman from the wrong side of the tracks and blames her for his alienation from his son and his subsequent death. The old man sets out to take the little girl from her mother until Mike starts meddling. He is encouraged to get involved by the ghost of his wife who leaves him messages on the refrigerator spelled out in alphabet magnets.
If you have read any novels featuring ghosts that you would like to recommend, let me know. I've only ever stumbled upon them on the shelf. It is hard to find them in the catalog without getting a lot of horror stories or non-fiction books about the paranormal.
