Rec request

[icepixie]

O Flist, I find myself in the mood for ghost story/haunted house/otherwise paranormally creepy-type novels. I do have a preference for...um..."atmospheric," I guess you'd call it? over blood-n-guts. My favorite ghost-related novel is James P. Blaylock's Winter Tides, which I like because the foggy, wintry California beach setting is so vivid, the characters are fun and quirky, and there are lots of tension-inducing scenes of people walking through fog and hearing ghostly footsteps and the like.

I've read everything of Poe that I care to, and I've also got The Haunting of Hill House, The Turn of the Screw, Carrie, and House of Leaves under my belt, but beyond that I'm wide open for recs. Classics are as good as obscure gems, because I don't read much horror/paranormal and probably haven't read them.

Comments

[graycardinal]

You might do well to look up the works of Barbara Michaels, with perhaps Ammie Come Home as a starting point. She is better known nowadays under her other byline, Elizabeth Peters, for her mysteries -- most especially the Amelia Peabody series. Under the Michaels name she published a good many novels of what used to be called "romantic suspense" - about two-thirds involving ghosts and supernatural themes, the other third being historicals. All are excellent, though the ghosts are largely felt rather than seen, these books having been written long before today's paranormal conventions made themselves felt. (There is one novel under the "Elizabeth Peters" byline, Devil-May-Care, that is also in this vein but with a darkly comic touch.)

For a more direct supernatural element, but in a similar overall style, there is a quite readable quartet of novels beginning with Ghostlight under Marion Zimmer Bradley's byline (actually written mostly by Rosemary Edghill). While each of the four stands alone, there's also an overall storyline that develops over the course of the cycle.

One other: not creepy/scary in the least, but one of my all-time favorite ghost stories: The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope, nominally published as a young-adult title a good many years back. The ghosts are from the American Revolution, the "modern-day" plot takes place on a country estate where the nearest telephone is at the general store in town, and the characters are entirely charming. [How can one not be won over by a gentleman-rogue whose given name is Peaceable Drummond Sherwood?]

[icepixie]

I was rather meh on Amelia Peabody (I finished the first book, but felt no need to continue on to the others), but I'll give her other ones a shot.

Ghostlight sounds fun!

[graycardinal]

For all that they're immensely popular, the Peabody series is just eccentric enough to be something of an acquired taste. There's also a case to be made that the various Peters series rely a little too much on their heroines' innate invincibility. I'm very fond of the Peabody books, but they definitely are not everyone's cup of tea.

Fortunately, there are a good many stand-alone Peters titles that stand up quite well as good light mystery/romances with strong female leads. And in her Michaels persona, the author noticeably shifts tone; where the Peters books often have a very genre-aware sense of humor, the Michaels books mostly trade this for a strong genre-aware sense of atmosphere.