Lily Dale: Awakening by Wendy Staub (228 pages)
Psychics? Mediums? Ghosts? Readings? To Calla, these things are out of the ordinary…But to the people of Lily Dale, it is their life. Calla’s mother mysteriously has an accident which makes Calla come to Lily Dale to live with her quite eccentric grandmother, Odelia. Before going to Lily Dale, Calla had not known that it’s was the world’s leading place for spiritualism. Her mother never told her why she left Lily Dale long ago, but Calla has a strange curiosity to find out. Realizing where she is, Calla is now a little spooked. Now knowing that her Grandmother is a psychic, Calla researches Lily Dale. But, while doing so she begins to…Well…See things. She sees a woman. Not a real one, a ghost. Is she trying to tell Calla something? Will Calla find out the secret to her Mom’s mysterious death? Or… will she uncover a powerful energy lurking within her?
Review by Kaitlin F.
In the early 1870s, just after the Civil War, young Horace has become a photographer’s apprentice. He is anxious to take his first photographs, but his employer, Mr. Middleditch, does not give him any assignments. A wealthy woman comes into the photography shop requesting a portrait to be taken in her home. She says she is grieving for her daughter Eleanora and would like a portrait to be placed at her daughter’s tomb. Mr. Middleditch, a greedy man, concocts a scheme to superimpose a ghostly image of Eleanora into the woman’s photograph in order to make a name for himself in spirit photography, but Horace is warned by Pegg, the servant girl, that Eleanora was the not the woman’s daughter and she did not die of natural causes. Horace soon encounters Eleanora’s spirit and she is angry and vengeful. Can Horace stop the ghost before she hurts the ones who hurt her?
After nearly drowning in a lake, sixteen-year-old Sarah begins having psychic premonitions. Her family makes a drastic move across the country to Houston, Texas, and as soon as Sarah steps into their new house, she feels the presence of a ghost. The feeling overwhelms her and the family soon learns that a murder took place in the house a few years earlier. Sarah begins seeing the ghost of the murdered woman and she begs Sarah to help her. Sarah investigates the woman’s history and becomes entangled in a murder mystery that will leave you breathless until the last page.
Susannah the Mediator returns in this sequel to Shadowland. Suze can communicate with the dead, and this time she receives an alarming wake-up call in the middle of the night. A woman’s ghost is screaming at the top of her lungs and tells Suze to give “Red” a message for her: He didn’t kill her. This cryptic message leads Suze to Mr. “Red” Beaumont, who is a little loony to say the least. The eccentric millionaire, intrigued by Suze’s revelation that a woman wanted her to tell him he didn’t kill her, obsesses about Suze and her ability to communicate with ghosts. But will the knowledge of her talent lead to danger? Of course! Find out how Suze plans to get out of the mess she’s in this time by reading The Ninth Key!
This title is the first in a series of 6 by the author of such hits as The Princess Diaries and All-American Girl. Suze Simon’s mother has remarried and relocated from New York to California. Despite being the new girl at school, Suze manages to make a few friends and enemies within minutes of her arrival. You see, Suze is not exactly what you’d call a “normal” teenager. She can see, speak to, and touch ghosts. She has had this talent since birth. She finds it annoying, but not scary. Upon her arrival at Juniper Serra Catholic High School, she immediately encounters a very hostile ghost of a teenager, Heather, who is haunting the halls of the school. Suze decides it will be her mission to rid the school of this angry spirit before someone gets hurt. Meanwhile, she also is dealing with another ghost who is haunting her bedroom. With so many ghosts needing her attention, Suze doesn’t have much time to get settled into her new life in California.
Recently orphaned Judith Sparrow is invited to live with an uncle whom she has never met.