Book Review: Lockwood and Co:The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud

How do you feel about ghosts?  How about adventure and sarcastic banter?

The Screaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud, is set in a modern day London where ghosts stalk the night, and only children and teenagers can see them clearly. Our heroes Anthony Lockwood, Lucy Carlyle, and George Cubbins run a psychic detection agency. That is, they hunt and destroy ghosts. But unlike most other agencies, they don't have any adult supervisors. Since adults can't see or hear ghosts very well, Lockwood thinks they just get in the way.  Lucy tends to agree, given her unpleasant past.  George hates everyone equally.

We meet Lucy and Lockwood as they prepare to banish what they think is a routine ghost.  The ghost, and the case itself, prove too hot to handle, and Lucy and Lockwood barely escape.  Unfortunately, the Lockwood and Co. Psychic Detection Agnecy finds itself in some trouble with the law, and Lucy, Lockwood, and George are forced to take on a dangerous case in one of the most haunted houses in England.  The last team that tried to clear the historic mansion of ghosts died; every last one of them.

I enjoyed all the action and adventure, as well as the smart mouth comedy in the face of creepy, deadly ghosts.  Hope you will too!

Happy reading!

~ gothbrarian

Magic and the Mafia

 White Cat, by Holly Black, is part mystery, part dark urban fantasy, part twisted romance, and part mob story.  I hope you like your fiction dark and bruised, because this story doesn't pull any punches.  It takes place in a world very much like our own, except everyone has to wear gloves to protect themselves from curses.  And our dubious "hero," Cassel Sharpe, knows a little more about working curses than your average Joe.

Cassel wakes up on the roof of his fancy high school dorm and nearly falls to his death. He's been sleepwalking again, and now the school is threatening to expel him as too much of a liability.  Was he really sleepwalking, or was he cursed? He dreamed of following a white cat....

Cassel is the only nonworker in a family of curse workers.  Since curse working was outlawed in the 1920s, most curse workers are employed by the mob.  At first, Cassel thinks he's only got to con his school into letting him back in.  Then he begins to think that the dream about the white cat might be related to the girl he loved when he was fourteen; the girl he killed. At least, that's what his two brothers told him after they dumped the body.  Cassel doesn't remember why he killed her, only that he was standing over her bloody body.  Now Cassel thinks his brothers are hiding something from him, something important.  To learn the horrible truth, he'll have to find the white cat from his dream. But the truth is a dangerous thing when the mob is involved, and Cassel finds himself caught between murder and treachery in the underbelly of curse worker society.

If you like White Cat, the curse workers series continues with Red Glove and Black Heart.

Happy reading.
~gothbrarian