The thirteen offerings in this Halloween Hauntings feature have several things in common, the most important of these is that they are all outstanding reads and rank amongst the best YA dark fiction novels I have read in the cast couple of years. There is an outstanding mix of newcomers to the genre such as Amelinda Bérubé and Theresa Braun, mixing with genre big-hitters Amy Lukavics whom I have frequently reviewed and recommended on Ginger Nuts of Horror.

As it is Halloween time the inter-connecting theme of this article is hauntings, either in the context of haunted house fiction, or more personal individual hauntings. So, there are no zombies or vampires, just good old-fashioned scares. Which is, after all, the lifeblood of the genre and Halloween. 

All thirteen books have been previously reviewed on Ginger Nuts over the previous four years, so you might say I am cherry-picking some of my ‘haunting themed’ favourites in this article. All have been published in the last two or three years and the majority of the reviews are brief rewrites of longer original reviews.

They are not ranked, although the ‘Queen of YA Horror’ Amy Lukavics is undoubtedly first and she is the only author to feature twice. Sadly, Amy did not publish a novel in 2019, let us hope Her Majesty returns in 2020.  ​

Richard Farren Barber’s Closer Still is a ghost story with a seriously good haunting, much of which never stretches beyond the bedroom of a deeply troubled teenager. This book was probably was not written with the YA market in mind, but the believable and engaging characters make it a book lots of young teenagers will identify with. Pulling in under 130-pages, with absolutely no flab or a word wasted, it could be the perfect gift for a kid who does not read much or is put off by big books and is interested in a very contemporary ghost story.Fifteen-year-old Rachel is bullied by a group of girls who used to be her best friends, with the tormenting often taking place at school. Much of the rest of the novella takes place in Rachel’s bedroom where she sees the ghost of her dead ex-best friend Katie. The ghost is not exactly unpleasant, more unnerving, but has an agenda of her own. Before the death all the girls were fast-friends and much of the novella is about what happened to the friendship and the circumstances which led to her death. The author expertly shrouds this shocking revelation until late into the story which picks up pace nicely as the ghost grows more powerful. This was a terrific novella which combines many clever story lines utilising social media, bully, teenage angst, friendship, guilt and the supernatural.

 Alex Bell’s dark and unsettling tale of tiny porcelain dolls, the size of two pence pieces, is an edgy read loaded with tension and dark atmosphere. Right from the opening pages, with teenagers unwisely fooling with online Ouija boards it builds into an outstanding page-turner with these evil little creatures whispering from behind a locked glass cabinet and in their words they have the power to kill.  Equally demonic, the Charlotte’s have the ability to control and influence others to do their bidding, sneaking around a vast haunted house sowing horrible plans and turning characters against each other.
 
Loaded with gothic atmosphere, with a superb setting, a huge house converted from Dunvagen School for Girls which was closed in 1910, poor Sophie is sucked into a mystery which takes her all the way back to 1910.  But first she must solve the mystery of what really happened to her dead cousin Rebecca. Bearing in mind this novel is aimed at kids it has some hair-raising scenes, these nasty little dolls, once they escape from their cabinet even blind one of the characters with their “stick a needle in their eye game”. However, some of the most unsettling scenes are character driven, rather than perpetrated by the dolls. The pace moves fast, the characterisation is strong and the combination of mystery and the supernatural is finely balanced. It’s perfectly pitched at children who like a good mix of horror, thriller and mystery.

My dad reviews a lot of horror novels and gives me most of my reading material. About six months ago he gave me a book called Reapers are the Angels, he watched me closely as I read it, especially as I got near the end, I think he hoped I would cry. I did, the ending was so sad. I think my dad was secretly pleased about my tears. A few weeks ago, he brought home a book called When We Were Animals, I did not cry, but I still loved it. My dad told me it was written by the same author who wrote Reapers are the Angels, but he used a different name.
 
My dad had known Josh/Alden for a few years on social media, so we contacted him about this interview and review. Both books really caught my attention and I could not quite figure out whether they were adult or Young Adult (YA), whichever, they both genuinely moved me. I’m sure Josh had been asked these questions many times before, but I loved his answers and it was a real thrill for him give me book recommendations and reveal more about the amazing character ‘Blackhat Roy’ (my favourite) from When We Were Animals.
 
AJ: Why do you write under two names Joshua Gaylord and Alden Bell?
 
Josh: This was my editor’s idea.  My first book, Hummingbirds, was a very straight-forward literary New York girls’ school novel.  Nothing supernatural, nothing scary.  So, when my second novel turned out to be a post-apocalyptic Southern Gothic zombie novel, the people who are in charge of the marketing end of my life thought it would be a good idea to develop a separate brand. 
 
AJ: Both novels feature incredibly convincing teenage girl characters. How did you do it? Why girls?
 
Josh: For my money, teenage girls are the best kinds of characters to write about.  Somehow, whatever they’re doing is believable.  I think it’s because teenage girls are masters of disguise—professional adopters of roles.  They luxuriate in their own drama and they are taught by culture to don a different mask for every circumstance.  What more could you ask from a character?  Also, when I was a teenager myself I think I was more of a teenage girl than a teenage boy.  I had no idea how to interpret boys.  They wanted me to hit a ball with a stick and run around in a circle. 
 
AJ: Why did the ending of ‘Reapers Are The Angels’ have to be so sad? Did you ever consider any alternative? Both my dad and I cried at the end.
 
Josh: I cried at the end too.  I think I chose that ending for a few reasons.  *Spoilers ahead* First, I didn’t want to be pressured to write a sequel.  I love the character of Temple, and I wanted her to exist in her most perfect form.  I think I was worried that if I wrote more about that character she would get diluted over time.  Or she would become a parody of herself.  It’s like Housman writes in “To an Athlete Dying Young”—sometimes it’s best to make your exit when you’re at your peak.  Also, I think Temple’s death is a beautiful inevitability.  I love that character all the more precisely because she’s doomed.  To have taken away her doom would have been to do her an injustice.
 
AJ: My favourite character in ‘When We Were Animals’ was Blackhat Roy can you tell us a little bit about how you dreamed up this character? He had this really engaging edge and layers which I found genuinely intriguing and way more interesting than ‘boring’ Peter!
 
Josh: You have made the classic and inevitable choice.  Have you read Wuthering Heights?  Blackhat Roy is exciting, dirty, violent, passionate, problematic Heathcliff.  And Peter is gentle, boring, pleasant Edgar.  Everyone chooses Heathcliff.  You have to choose Heathcliff.  And then you have to reckon with what it means about you that you have chosen the dangerous option, the “bad” option.  That’s the fundamental question for Lumen in the book: She is a classic “good girl” developing a taste for things that are unquestionably “bad”—and she is forced to ask herself what that means about her identity.  Where exactly does she fit in—and what aspects of herself is she fighting against?
 
AJ: Do you see ‘Reapers Are The Angels’ and ‘When We Were Animals’ as Young Adult novels or adults? Do you know of many teenagers reading them? I probably would never have discovered them except for my dad.
 
Josh: When I wrote them, I didn’t think of them as YA books.  I didn’t think of them as adult books either.  I just thought of them as books I would like to read.  My publishers like to market them as YA/Adult crossover novels—but I’m less concerned about categories and labels.  I think teenagers can certainly read them, and I think they would recognize a lot of themselves in the books.  But I think that’s true of adults too.  If you try to write something authentically human, then I don’t think such writing has age limits.
 
AJ: I read you are an English teacher? Do your pupils know you write horror and if so do they read it?
 
Josh: They do know—and, sadly, they don’t care.  It’s an odd phenomenon.  When you’re standing in front of a classroom, you’re just an English teacher.  They know I write books, but I think they see me as too common or goofy to be taken seriously as a writer.  Once you start giving people pop quizzes on their reading, they stop being able to see you as a high intellect.  The funny thing is that I have a friend who teaches at another school, and she has told her students that she knows a writer.  Her students are fascinated with me, apparently.  There’s an adage in there somewhere.  If you get too close, the luster wears off.  I’ve stopped trying to be impressive to people I see every day; I’ll stick with trying to impress people I don’t know. 
 
AJ: My dad says ‘Reapers Are The Angels’ is the finest zombie novel ever written. I loved it too. Do you read zombie fiction and if so what do you recommend or were inspired by?
 
Josh: Actually, I don’t read zombie fiction.  But the books that inspired it are Southern Gothic novels.  If you like Temple, try Tom Franklin’s Smonk or Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone.  Those are both books with main characters who inspired Temple.  And, of course, William Faulkner.  Just read all the Faulkner you can stomach.  There’s nothing better.  In terms of the zombie mythology, I was inspired by movies—especially George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.  I’m a fan of traditional slow zombies.  Once zombies start running, they hog too much of the story space.
 
AJ: In ‘When We Were Animals’ there are no mobile phones and the time period is very vague, when the teenagers go out ‘breaching’ is it supposed to symbolise periods when kids fooled around without phones and social media?
 
Josh: I know—it’s kind of anachronistic.  My first novel is also about a contemporary high school, and there are also no mobile phones.  Honestly, it’s hard for me to incorporate mobile phones into my books.  Those things are like where drama goes to die.  Even in real life.  I see my students spending so much time on their phones, and it makes me sad to think what their version of human communication has become.  I know I sound like an old man—but I do notice how teenagers’ interactions with each other have started losing their spark and spontaneity.  Their reactions IRL are dulled.  Their conversations are curtailed.  When I wanted to talk to a girl in high school I had a crush on, I was a blathering mess.  It was like my own personal journey through hell, because there was was—right in front of me.  For teenagers now it’s too easy to avoid those journeys into hell.
 
AJ: ‘When We Were Animals’ came out in 2015, do you have anything new coming out soon or what are you working on?
 
Josh: I have a number of projects I’m working on—but they’re all in various stages of incompleteness.  There’s actually a third book in the Reapers series that I’m currently trying to find a home for.  Fingers crossed - I would love to see that one in print.
 
AJ: Which horror authors would you recommend to a fourteen-year-old (me) or the kids in your classes?
 
Josh: When I was fourteen, I was immersed in Stephen King and Clive Barker—but I also had a real fixation on gore and the grotesque.  Clive Barker is wonderful because so much of his stuff involves body horror—which is particularly apt for teenagers.  But, of course, you have to have the stomach for it.  I wouldn’t recommend it to the faint of heart. 
 
AJ: In ‘When We Were Animals’ the phenomenon of ‘breaching’ when teenagers run wild and crazy at night is never truly explained why it happens, but the moon seems to play a key role, could you expand upon this a little bit? To begin with I thought it was werewolves!
 
Josh: Yes, the story is definitely my version of werewolf mythology.  But it also comes from the fact that when I was younger I always romanticized werewolves because of their freedom.  I was like Lumen—a good student who was always overly concerned with what people thought about me.  When I thought about what it would be like to be a werewolf, I imagined not caring about all the mundane daily concerns of image or moral consequence.  I loved the idea of just running through the streets, not caring what people thought about me.  For me, the werewolf mythology was always about fulfilling the fantasy of being selfish, of dropping the choirboy façade I was so intent on maintaining.
 
AJ: Could you explain the lack of speech marks and punctuation in ‘Reapers Are The Angels’? It was confusing at first, but I quickly got into the rhythm of it.
 
Josh: That’s a convention of the Southern Gothic style—and I wanted to acknowledge that I was writing in that style.  For me it represents the breakdown of the barrier between dialogue and exposition.  I like the fact that my characters’ voices don’t always seem realistic.  Temple’s voice is too inexplicably poetic and majestic for her character.  That’s the author’s voice creeping in.  That’s the exposition merging with the dialogue.  The lack of quotations marks represents that.
 
AJ: Thank you so much Josh, I’m going to read ‘Wuthering Heights’ next!
 
AJ

I recently read two very different novels by Alden Bell and Joshua Gaylord only to discover they are in fact the same person. Those novels were Reapers Are The Angels and When We Were Animals and had me wondering which guy was the real deal; Josh or Alden? Or both maybe? I enjoyed both books mainly because they both had very strong female protagonists who both moved me in different ways. What else did they have in common? Not much really, except that they were both brilliant and I highly recommend them.

My favourite leading female of the two was most definitely ‘Temple’ (from Reapers) who was the ultimate free spirit. A fifteen-year-old girl seeking redemption, who had lived her entire life in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, trying to survive in a world slowly beginning to recover. She’d lived by herself for most of her life, struggling to connect with the other people she met along her journey. On the other hand, we have ‘Lumen’ (from Animals) who narrates her story in first person and has a different kind of inner strength. Lumen was a very introverted person, in many ways the opposite of Temple, who hangs in the background, watching from afar and never quite sure whether to join in, or whether she would be wanted.

The Reapers Are The Angels follows Temple as she is hunted down by a man called Moses after killing his brother, who tried to rape her. Along the way she runs into many characters including Maurey, who has special needs, and takes him with her on her journey or race away from Moses. Throughout the story flashbacks reveal why she decided to help Maurey and the underlying reason for her guilt. One of the most memorable scenes in the novel, which truly creeped me out, was when Temple ran into new, different type of zombie which I like to call ‘zombie hillbillies’, an inbred super-zombie which had been experimenting with other substances.

The beautiful novel, which ranks amongst my favourite books, is very much a journey for Temple both literally and figuratively. It seems weird to call a zombie novel ‘beautiful’ but there was just something about it which really moved me. Another powerful scene was when Temple goes on a date with a random boy she met at a town that is beginning to reclaim areas street my street. She has a cola-cola with ice, hangs out, although deep down she feels she doesn’t belong and wants to hit the road again. I also enjoyed the moments between Moses and Temple, even though he’s the villain because they were so similar to each other.

What sets this book apart from other zombie fiction was that the creature aspect of the novel is not the centre and lurks in the background leaving space for plot development and the characters to breathe. I recommended that you keep some tissues nearby while reading it because I cried my eyes out at the end of it. My dad, who recommended the novel, was very pleased with my tears.  

When We Were Animals is a strange novel about a small town where when teenagers reach a certain age, they go ‘breaching’. Although the concept of breaching is never fully explained, it is best described as a pull where the teens lose control, running wild in the streets, sometimes naked, losing all normal inhibitions. Their parents don’t do anything about this because they did it themselves years earlier and it is seen as a peculiar right of passage into adulthood.

Lumen, however, swears she’ll never breach because of her mother. Soon everyone around her is breaching apart from her, including her only friend Polly. When the sound of the teens howling echoes the streets she hears her classmates calling her name and the pull becomes almost irresistible. The story also has many notable characters such as: Blackhat Roy, who is a personal favourite of mine and a real standout figure in the story. The novel also flashes forward to see Lumen as a married adult with a son, as she reflects back on her past and begins to feel the urge again.

I felt both novels had similar aspects; both are coming of age stories that include love, death and teenagers with strange types of freedom. Both also spend a lot of time alone.  In the world of 2019 technology is a huge part of life but in these stories it is barely ever mentioned. Allowing the plot to flow and the roaming of the characters to be rich and be grounded in reality. Though Lumen and Temple live in two very different worlds, they are both young girls growing up in hard places and in the end they are both human and very fragile characters which really touched me.

It was very hard to tell whether both books were adult or Young Adult novels, my dad gives me a mixture of both to read. When I get into a book I have real tunnel vision for it and I had that feeling for both these stories.

One of the stands out of When We Were Animals was the bad boy Blackhat Roy. He wasn’t a main character but his shadow dominated the book and I felt myself pulled to his dark, irresistible, side. Blackhat Roy was nasty, interesting, layered, violent and very human character that was entertaining to read and was the only true choice of Lumen. (RIP Peter).

I’m not too sure how well-known Angels Are The Reapers and When We Were Animals are, but I would recommend them for strong teenage or adult readers who enjoy clever horror about people in tough situations. My dad is a massive fan of this author also and we both hope he brings out another book soon.

I wonder how Lumen survive in a zombie-apocalypse? Or what would Temple make of the drama of high school? Maybe Alden or Josh will tell us in the accompanying interview.
AJ

In the last couple of months some terrific titles have come my way, which include dark fantasy, some juicy romance and the usual taste of teen dystopia. There are ten to choose from and hopefully you will be able to find something to catch the eye of a bored teenager, favourite niece or nephew, or stock up your library with new selections. They are not ranked in any particular order.

There seems to be a neverending supply of books, particularly in YA, with new stories being spun out of famous fictional stories. The Deathless Girls is a fine YA version of one of these and builds a story out of minor female vampire characters in Stoker's Dracula. In actual fact, they are so small I think they only featured in a few background scenes as his brides. So, it's an interesting, but very inevitable story, as readers of Dracula will know what is going to happen in the end. You do not have to have read Dracula to enjoy this though, the Count is barely in the book until the latter stages, but his mystique and reputation pre-empts his eventual appearance and he is nicely foreshadowed.  

The story is told through twins, Lil and Kizzy, who see their home burned and their family slaughtered and they are then sold as slaves. Much of the novel is about their unfortunate progression to eventually end up in the clutches of Dracula. Teen readers may find this a tad slow, but it is worth sticking with, both girls were engaging lead characters, with Lil narrating the story. Her sister always being the more outgoing and popular of the two and was greatly admired by Lil. The book puts much focus on the origins of the girls, who are gypsies and are looked down upon most of the others and culturally much information is provided on their background and Lil follows her sister who is taken to Dracula's castle first. This was an engaging historical fiction novel which wisely spent more time on the girls, their history family and culture, than on the vampire. Although I would not necessarily call it a horror novel, it will probably have more appeal to girls than boys and has much to say about how women and gypsies were treated in earlier centuries. Aimed at kids aged thirteen plus.

I am a huge fan of Dawn Kurtagich and we have featured both her previous novels The Dead House and Creeper Man on Ginger Nuts. Her latest novel Teeth in the Mist is perhaps even more ambitious and is a complex story, set in a huge mansion in rural Wales, split over three narratives in the present day, 1851 and 1583 with a strong supernatural theme permeating through the story. It was a very chunky book, with different fonts and voices and took a bit of time to get into the flow but it is worthy sticking with. This was the case with both her previous two novels, let us hope teenage readers give it a chance as it is not an easy read and will challenge many.

Sixteen-year-old photography buff Zoey ends up at Medwyn Mill House and is fascinated with the ruin and after spending the night there with her friend Poulton and is sure they are not alone.  Jumping back to 1851 seventeen-year-old Roan arrives at Mill House as a ward and soon realises she is connected to an ancient secret and must try and escape the house, but that is not as easy as it might sound. However, there is something connecting the three young women, which also includes Hermoine who relocates with her husband to the same area in 1583.  This was a very strong blend of mystery, horror and dark fantasy, even if it did not quite unsettle me in the way the magnificent Creeper Man did. But is certainly another highly original read as I have come to expect from this talented writer. Aimed at kids aged thirteen plus.

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The Girl in the Locked Room is the perfect start for kids aged around nine or ten looking for haunted house stories which are not too scary, or long and have believable likable characters. Jules and her family move into a big old house which needs a lot of construction, the building gives her an odd vibe and before long she believes there is a girl (or a ghost) living in the locked top floor room. Moving back and forwards in time to when the ghost was alive Jules soon begins to unravel the secrets of what happened in the house over a century earlier. Not all ghosts are scary or nasty and this is a nice play on the ‘friendly’ ghost theme which also looks at friendship in a non-threatening manner and if parents are reading it aloud to younger children there is much to discuss. Aimed at kids aged eight to ten.