A young boy who lives in an apartment house is convinced that his mysterious new neighbor is a witch.

"Steeped in Gothic eeriness."--Nicola Cornick, USA Today bestselling author In Salem, they burned. Now, they will rise. New Oldbury, 1821 The house holds its breath, trying to outlast me… Something has awakened in Willow Hall. Eighteen-year-old Lydia Montrose can feel it. But she has no idea what it is. Rocked by rumor and scandal, Lydia, her parents, and her sisters, Catherine and Emeline, fled their sparkling life in Boston for the sleepy country estate. But bone-chilling noises in the night have Lydia convinced their idyllic new home wasn’t exactly vacant when they arrived. The Salem witch trials cast a long shadow over the Montrose family as the cloying heat of summer in Massachusetts mingles with something sinister in the air. The sprawling history of Willow Hall is no stranger to secrets, and its dark past soon calls to Lydia, igniting ancient magic she never knew she possessed. But with menacing forces unwilling to rest, threatening to tear her family apart, Lydia must learn to harness her newly discovered power or risk losing everyone she holds dear. Don't miss Hester Fox's next novel, THE BOOK OF THORNS, where two sisters who never knew the other existed meet on opposite sides during the Napoleonic Wars and must use the magic of flowers to solve the mystery of their mother’s death—while surviving the war raging around them... Look for these other gothic mysteries from Hester Fox: The Last Heir to Blackwood Library The Widow of Pale Harbor The Orphan of Cemetery Hill A Lullaby for Witches

Harry Bridges is a retired detective; the police force obliged him to finish his career at the young age of 55, leaving him at a loose end. A career as a store detective follows and for five long and boring years he struggles to find any worth in life. Finally, at 60 years of age he finds himself unemployed, unmarried and at the point of ending it all. He is preparing for suicide when fate intervenes and throws an old colleague into his path who asks for help with a particularly gruesome murder. Harry finds new meaning to life and his old detective skills come to the fore. However, all is not as it seems and he finds himself embroiled in the dark world of the supernatural. Old wounds emanating from the seventeenth century are coming to the surface. The spectre of Matthew Hopkins, the witch-finder general of Cromwell's era, is back in the present, pursued by his victims in a never ending game of cat and mouse. Even Harry's skill as a detective may not be a match for the dark powers that now surround him.

Grade level: 1, 2, 3, 4, k, p, e, t.

Keep students happily focused on learning during two of the most exciting holidays of the year for the elementary classroom-Halloween and Valentine's Day. Poems and excerpts are used as launching points for such projects as writing spooky tongue twisters or designing animal valentine cartoons. Reproducible language arts strategies teach word play, interviewing, letter writing, research skills, problem solving, and metaphorical language while encouraging divergent thinking. Grades 1-5.