As halloween is one of my favorite holidays, I’ve been celebrating by dedicating all of my Fiction Fridays to spooky, scary stories. Today it’s The Haunting of Maddy Clare: your next ghost story.

The Haunting of Maddy Clare
Simone St. James

Nothing cures the aches of a cool fall day spent in doors staring at a computer screen so well as a good ghost story. If that day happens to be Halloween, then its all the better.

I didn’t read the haunting of Maddy Clare on halloween. It fact it wasn’t even fall. It was a sweltering evening in August, and I had spent the week in a training conference.

The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James isn’t just a ghost story, it’s a period piece, and a mystery. Set in England after the First World War. The story focuses on two women. The eponymous Maddy Clare, and Sarah Piper, a young woman alone, struggling to find her footing in a world shaken by the violence of the Great War, and a rapidly changing society. In the wake of all great tragedies, personal tragedies are pushed away.

Working as a temp Sarah Piper is accustomed to the vicissitudes of men in offices, vengeful spirits not so much. Still London is bleak, and like so many others, she’s desperate.

A great book doesn’t just have great characters. A great book also has a world a reader can get lost in. I read into the early hours and fully expected to emerge into a small English hamlet, walking along cobbled streets, expecting to see ladies in gloves, and fabulous star hats. It was impossible to stop myself from peeking out the curtains to ensure the pattering on the ceiling was, in fact, the clattering of squirrels.

Are you up for it? Is the Haunting of Maddy Clare your next ghost story?