Amber House
There are no ghosts in Amber House, only currents of time and echoes of the lives once lived there. Women in Sarah’s family have always seen these echoes and most were labeled crazy. After her grandmother’s death, Sarah, her mother, and her five-year-old brother travel to Amber House to ready it for sale, and Sarah finds she, too, is seeing scenes from the past trapped in time. Despite a contemporary Maryland setting, the highly descriptive, lush prose and Sarah’s strong, first-person point of view lends an atmospheric, gothic feel to this first book in a planned trilogy, which stands alone quite well. Time shifts, ghostly apparitions, and a mansion that practically becomes another character, with its hedge maze and hundreds of years of hidden family secrets, serve as a backdrop to an extravagant sweet-sixteen masquerade ball and a hunt for lost diamonds. The mother-daughter author team’s deft handling of family dynamics, believable characterization, and twist on the now ubiquitous love triangle will leave readers eager for more. Grades 9-12. --Charli Osborne