"A graceful, elegantly told ghost story that is at times frightening, at times heartwarming, often quite funny, and always an engrossing and fascinating read." ---Rodney Vaccaro, Emmy Award–winning Hollywood screenwriter and producer "I started Friday night and got up Saturday morning with a desire to get back to it to finish. In my experience, if I wake up and the first thing on my mind is getting back to a book, it's a good book." ---Bryan Uecker, co-owner of The Book Nook & Java Shop, Montague, Michigan "A spellbinding mystery of timeless love, loss, and a house that held all the answers. I couldn't put it down." ---Judith Evans Thomas, coauthor of the Born to Shop travel books "Living in a 100-year old Michigan farmhouse myself, I was totally pulled into the real possibilities Newhof's characters found themselves in. Ghosts and real life haunts made for a compelling read." ---Robbyn Smith van Frankenhuyzen, author of the series Hazel Ridge Farm Stories "Spirits and Wine is a can't-put-down novel that feels less like fiction and more like sharing a glass of wine with your best friends who go on to disclose the deeply disturbing, deadly things occurring in the lovely old house they planned to restore. Susan Newhof writes truthfully and with beautiful care, evoking the icy appeal of a small lakeshore town in Michigan while revealing the wretched secrets that cling to one dwelling. After reading this harrowing tale in one sitting, I am dying to ask the author---did these menacing events really happen . . . to you?" ---Jerrilyn Farmer, author of the best-selling Madeline Bean Mysteries "If only the walls could talk---and they do in Susan Newhof's thrilling Spirits and Wine. Readers, be prepared for an absorbing adventure into John and Anna's journey to solve a century-old mystery wrapped within the walls of their newly purchased 'dream home.' Told creatively in tandem, the couple's story of life in pursuit of truth will leave you wondering just where the fact ends and the fiction begins. Keep the lights on and enjoy!" ---Beckey Burgoyne, author of Perfectly Amanda: Gunsmoke's "Miss Kitty"---To Dodge and Beyond It's a mystery and a ghost story, all wrapped up in one. A newly married couple buys an old house in a small lakeshore town in West Michigan and finds it haunted by the dramatic secrets of its past inhabitants. As the couple settles in, disturbing events prompt them to investigate who those residents were, what happened to them, and why one spirit remains active. Could the Spanish influenza epidemic in the region, which resulted in the deaths of an unprecedented number of young, healthy adults in Michigan and elsewhere in 1918---19, and the resulting slew of orphans, have something to do with the spirit now haunting their house? They are determined to discover the truth about their house, even if it jeopardizes their own safety.

A Boston Globe Best Nonfiction Book of 2011 Celebrated as one of the most poignant stylists of his generation, André Aciman has written a luminous series of linked essays about time, place, identity, and art that show him at his very finest. From beautiful and moving pieces about the memory evoked by the scent of lavender; to meditations on cities like Barcelona, Rome, Paris, and New York; to his sheer ability to unearth life secrets from an ordinary street corner, Alibis reminds the reader that Aciman is a master of the personal essay.

When I wake up at Locklear Academy, I have no memory of how I got here... or any memories at all. Oh, yeah, and did I mention that I'm dead? If I ever want to pass on, I'm going to have to recover my past. Easier said than done. But Locklear, aka Ghost Academy, specializes in helping spirits take care of their unfinished business. There are just a few problems. First, the X-ers, an extremist group whose main goal is to forcibly send ghosts like me into the great whatever beyond, painfully and without that sense of peace we crave. Then there's the polter-ghost who has been following me around since I got here. But my biggest distraction comes in the form of Rafe: a fox shifter with the most adorable dimples, carrying around way more guilt than any ghost deserves. Maybe I shouldn't have a crush in the afterlife, but I'm dead, not blind. As my memories start to resurface, so do the threats from the X-ers. The clock is ticking and every moment I'm here becomes more dangerous. Not just because of the X-ers, but because the more time I spend with Rafe, the less I want to move on.Ghost Academy is a YA paranormal academy / urban fantasy that will contribute to your reading related insomnia. This is book one of the Ghost Academy Duology and a spin off of Blakemore Academy.

An unsentimental vision of the west, new and old, comes to life in a gritty new collection of stories by the author of Snow, Ashes In Ghosts of Wyoming, Alyson Hagy explores the hardscrabble lives and terrain of America's least-populous state. Beyond the tourist destinations of Jackson Hole and Yellowstone lies a less familiar and wilder frontier defined by the tension wrought by abundance and scarcity. A young runaway with a big secret slips across the state border and steals a collie pup from the Meeker County fairgrounds. A chorus of trainmen details a day spent laying rail across the Wyoming Territory, while contemporary voices describe life in the oil and gas fields near Gillette. A traveling preacher is caught up in a deadly skirmish between cattle rustlers and ranchers on his way from Rawlins to the Indian reservation on the Popo Agie River. Locals and activists clash when a tourist makes an archaeological discovery near Hoodoo Mountain. With spirited, lyrical prose, Hagy expertly weaves together Wyoming's colorful pioneer and speculator history with the notoften- heard voices of petroleum workers, thrill-seeking rock climbers, and those left behind by the latest boom and bust.

Rain of the Ghosts is the first in Greg Weisman's series about an adventurous young girl, Rain Cacique, who discovers she has a mystery to solve, a mission to complete and, oh, yes, the ability to see ghosts. Welcome to the Prospero Keys (or as the locals call them: the Ghost Keys), a beautiful chain of tropical islands on the edge of the Bermuda Triangle. Rain Cacique is water-skiing with her two best friends Charlie and Miranda when Rain sees her father waiting for her at the dock. Sebastian Bohique, her maternal grandfather, has passed away. He was the only person who ever made Rain feel special. The only one who believed she could do something important with her life. The only thing she has left to remember him by is the armband he used to wear: two gold snakes intertwined, clasping each other's tails in their mouths. Only the armband . . . and the gift it brings: Rain can see dead people. Starting with the Dark Man: a ghost determined to reveal the Ghost Keys' hidden world of mystery and mysticism, intrigue and adventure.

'It's enthralling stuff, mixing the scholarly with the accessible and placing storytelling right at the heart of the human experience.' - History Revealed 'A fascinating journey' - Yorkshire Post 'Marvellous...Finkel is an expert in Mesopotamian cultures at the British Museum, and is one of the most clever, and nicest, of people it has ever been my pleasure to encounter...A fascinating journey' - The Scotsman There are few things more in common across cultures than the belief in ghosts. Ghosts inhabit something of the very essence of what it is to be human. Whether we personally 'believe' or not, we are all aware of ghosts and the rich mythologies and rituals surrounding them. They have inspired, fascinated and frightened us for centuries - yet most of us are only familiar with the vengeful apparitions of Shakespeare, or the ghastly spectres haunting the pages of 19th century gothic literature. But their origins are much, much older... The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies takes us back to the very beginning. A world-renowned authority on cuneiform, the form of writing on clay tablets which dates back to 3400BC, Irving Finkel has embarked upon an ancient ghost hunt, scouring these tablets to unlock the secrets of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians to breathe new life into the first ghost stories ever written. In The First Ghosts, he uncovers an extraordinarily rich seam of ancient spirit wisdom which has remained hidden for nearly 4000 years, covering practical details of how to live with ghosts, how to get rid of them and bring them back, and how to avoid becoming one, as well as exploring more philosophical questions: what are ghosts, why does the idea of them remain so powerful despite the lack of concrete evidence, and what do they tell us about being human?