Ghosts of Eden
This book starts out as a classic ΄40s era house horror story, a la the Haunting of Hill House, and morphs gradually into a science fiction monster tale with biblical elements. While none of these are unheard of in genre fiction, the combination is unusual. Saxon, who is returning home after incarceration in the insane asylum to face and settle her past, narrates most of the book. Other voices join in, and about halfway through the book you start to realize that the title speaks of ghosts plural in a very precise sense. There are a large number of primary characters, most of them dead, and it can be a little difficult to keep them straight although the villain, the “Serpent,” chants some of them for you often enough, The Heartbroken, The Hunter, the Hanged, The Embalmed, The Necrophiliac, The Deranged, The Impure. Each of these tells their story at some point in the book. Additionally, there is a dimwitted but spiritually gifted neighbor and an aged orphan who is tied into the past doings at the Roquefort Manor. The events include a factual devastating fire that took place in Bar Harbor in 1948 and still ends happily, sort of. The lovers are reunited. All of them. The ending has a twist, and all the plot threads are brought together deftly by the end. The book may confuse some readers who expect one kind of story and get another, but it has a lot of action going for it and moves quickly.