- Joined
- May 24, 2008
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- Wales, sadly. :D
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- www.salvatorepublishing.com
I wondered if anyone has read John Harwood's novels The Ghost Writer & The Séance? I've read several reviews on Amazon, and I very much want to buy these books; if you've read either (or both), please let me know your opinions. 
The Ghost Writer - Review:
Harwood does a marvelous job of embedding the mannered ghost stories within Gerard's story, and the stories-within-a-story works exceptionally well in his hands. The tales are so throat-grabbing by themselves that I forgot at times that they were but segments of the whole. The effect is truly eerie as details from them begin to surface in Gerard's plot.
The Séance - Review:
A man who believes in supernatural powers and seeks to harness them for his own ends lies at the core of The Séance, a beautifully plotted Victorian ghost story where the craving of power and revenge fuel much of the action. When the poverty-stricken Constance Langton inherits the vast ramshackle Wraxford Hall, the very large but quite uninhabitable manor house that lies on several hundred acres of woodland near the Suffolk coast, she cannot believe that all of the reported terror and cruelty could have taken place there. The house indeed has a dark history, where lightening bolts unexpectedly strike, where a ghostly suit of armour towers among the shadows, where the dark and sinister powers of mesmerism reign, and where the Hall's reclusive owners, Cornelius Wraxford and his only heir, his nephew Magnus, seem to have died in mysterious circumstances.
The Ghost Writer - Review:
Harwood does a marvelous job of embedding the mannered ghost stories within Gerard's story, and the stories-within-a-story works exceptionally well in his hands. The tales are so throat-grabbing by themselves that I forgot at times that they were but segments of the whole. The effect is truly eerie as details from them begin to surface in Gerard's plot.
The Séance - Review:
A man who believes in supernatural powers and seeks to harness them for his own ends lies at the core of The Séance, a beautifully plotted Victorian ghost story where the craving of power and revenge fuel much of the action. When the poverty-stricken Constance Langton inherits the vast ramshackle Wraxford Hall, the very large but quite uninhabitable manor house that lies on several hundred acres of woodland near the Suffolk coast, she cannot believe that all of the reported terror and cruelty could have taken place there. The house indeed has a dark history, where lightening bolts unexpectedly strike, where a ghostly suit of armour towers among the shadows, where the dark and sinister powers of mesmerism reign, and where the Hall's reclusive owners, Cornelius Wraxford and his only heir, his nephew Magnus, seem to have died in mysterious circumstances.
