Skip to main content

Editorial Content for A Head Full of Ghosts

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Sarah Rachel Egelman

Love them or hate them, reality shows are an ubiquitous part of the cultural landscape. The most popular examples, and the most problematic, tend to bring viewers into the lives and homes of families who capitalize on their secrets or supposed singularity. Like the reality shows it critiques, Paul Tremblay's A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS is fascinating and heartbreaking as it portrays a family that chooses to broadcast itself at its worst. Read More

Teaser

The lives of the Barretts are torn apart when 14-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism and contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts’ plight, resulting in what would become a hit reality TV show. Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie’s younger sister, Merry, at which point long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast begin to surface.

Promo

The lives of the Barretts are torn apart when 14-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism and contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts’ plight, resulting in what would become a hit reality TV show. Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie’s younger sister, Merry, at which point long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast begin to surface.

About the Book

A chilling thriller that brilliantly blends domestic drama, psychological suspense and a touch of modern horror, reminiscent of Mark Z. Danielewski’s HOUSE OF LEAVES, John Ajvide Lindqvist’s LET THE RIGHT ONE IN and Shirley Jackson’s THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE.

The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when 14-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia.

To her parents’ despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie’s descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts’ plight. With John, Marjorie’s father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of "The Possession," a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.

Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie’s younger sister, Merry. As she recalls those long ago events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast on television begin to surface --- and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil.

Editorial Content for The Cherry Harvest

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Carole Turner

It's 1944, and the war is dragging on. On the home front --- Door County, Wisconsin --- it’s time for the cherry harvest, but farm workers are scarce. The war has taken most of the men away. Those who remain can make better wages in the shipyards than they can harvesting cherries. The very survival of the farm families depends on the crop being harvested. Read More

Teaser

With food rationed and money scarce, Charlotte struggles to keep her family well fed during World War II. When their upcoming cherry harvest is threatened, she helps persuade local authorities to allow German war prisoners from a nearby camp to pick the fruit. But when Charlotte’s husband befriends one of the prisoners, a teacher named Karl, and invites him to tutor their daughter, the implications of Charlotte’s decision become apparent --- especially when she finds herself unexpectedly drawn to Karl.

Promo

With food rationed and money scarce, Charlotte struggles to keep her family well fed during World War II. When their upcoming cherry harvest is threatened, she helps persuade local authorities to allow German war prisoners from a nearby camp to pick the fruit. But when Charlotte’s husband befriends one of the prisoners, a teacher named Karl, and invites him to tutor their daughter, the implications of Charlotte’s decision become apparent --- especially when she finds herself unexpectedly drawn to Karl.

About the Book

A memorable coming-of-age story and love story, laced with suspense, which explores a hidden side of the home front during World War II, when German POWs were put to work in a Wisconsin farm community...with dark and unexpected consequences.

The war has taken a toll on the Christiansen family. With food rationed and money scarce, Charlotte struggles to keep her family well fed. Her teenage daughter, Kate, raises rabbits to earn money for college and dreams of becoming a writer. Her husband, Thomas, struggles to keep the farm going while their son, and most of the other local men, are fighting in Europe.

When their upcoming cherry harvest is threatened, strong-willed Charlotte helps persuade local authorities to allow German war prisoners from a nearby camp to pick the fruit.

But when Thomas befriends one of the prisoners, a teacher named Karl, and invites him to tutor Kate, the implications of Charlotte’s decision become apparent --- especially when she finds herself unexpectedly drawn to Karl. So busy are they with the prisoners that Charlotte and Thomas fail to see that Kate is becoming a young woman, with dreams and temptations of her own --- including a secret romance with the son of a wealthy, war-profiteering senator. And when their beloved Ben returns home, bitter and injured, bearing an intense hatred of Germans, Charlotte’s secrets threaten to explode their world.

The tables are turned when mean girl/popularity princess Regan Flay becomes a social pariah in LIFE UNAWARE by Cole Gibsen. Every mean thing she's ever written is posted all over the school, and no one will talk to her. Whether you feel bad for Regan or think she deserves what she got, it definitely makes you think twice about bullying --- the consequences, the hurt feelings, the lonliness, the self-doubt. And author Cole Gibsen is no stranger to these feelings herself; as a high school student, bullying caused her to live in fear of a pack of senior girls --- and give up one of her favorite hobbies. Check out Cole's blog post below, where she talks about her own experience with bullying, and be sure to check out her book!  

June 2015

Hold on to your butts! June is here, and, like the dinosaurs in Jurassic World, movies this month are bigger, faster and full of strange sound effects. As it turns out --- in a plot twist so predictable it could be straight out of Jurassic Park III --- the rest of our books on screen happen to be a more genteel bunch. Cue the classical music, Spielberg!

June 11, 2015

This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we think is a great summer reading selection. Read more about it, and enter our Summer Reading Contest by Friday, June 12th at 11:59am ET for a chance to win one of five copies of KITCHENS OF THE GREAT MIDWEST by J. Ryan Stradal, which releases on July 28th. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!

Jean de La Fontaine

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.

Attribution

Jean de La Fontaine

June 2015

YA fans will not be disappointed this month: The prize-winning adaptation of Jesse Andrews’ ME AND EARL AND THE

Interview: Natasha Preston, author of Awake

Jun 10, 2015

Author Natasha Preston has a few words to the wise for wannabe writers --- don’t write something unless your heart’s in it, and pay attention to your dreams…and nightmares! Yup, you read the second one right --- according to Natasha, your unconscious mind comes up with some great material. That’s how she thought up her latest novel, AWAKE, which follows a teen girl who lived with a cult as a young child and doesn’t remember…but now her birth parents want her back.

Read our interview with Natasha below to learn more about this romantic thriller, as well as get some behind-the-scenes glimpses into her writing regimen, thoughts on WattPad and more!


June 10, 2015

This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we think is a great summer reading selection. Read more about it, and enter our Summer Reading Contest by Thursday, June 11th at 11:59am ET for a chance to win one of five copies of ALL THE SINGLE LADIES by Dorothea Benton Frank, which is now in stores. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!