A Christmas Ghost Story
by Kim Newman
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From the Bram Stoker(R) and International Horror Guild Award-winning author of Anno Dracula, the perfect gift for those who love the dark fantastic imagination of T. Kingfisher. A nightmarish tale of a haunted Christmas set deep in the British countryside not too long ago. Cozy traditions are made twisted and terrifying as a mother and son grapple with their painful past.
December 1st. Angie and her teenage son Rust prepare for Christmas, stringing
fairy lights around their isolated home on the Somerset levels and decorating a tree
with traditional ornaments. The first door of the advent calendar is opened, but the chocolate inside tastes off. Rust receives his first Christmas card; it's unsigned, and the message is 'pinch, punch... first of the month'. The robin chirruping on a bough in a snowy woodland picture looks like a nasty piece of work.
The cards keep coming, one each day and each more sinister than the last, and a
frightened Angie recalls 'The Cards' - a seasonal TV show from her childhood that featured similar happenings, and while she remembers it vividly, there is no evidence that it was ever broadcast...
Christmas cheer is gradually poisoned, with cruels instead of carols, the turkey rotting in the fridge, unwelcome visits from the Merciless Gentlemen and the Jingle Basterds, and Rust becoming increasingly unwell. Angie begins to wonder if her childhood Christmases were in fact as joy filled as she remembers...
A frightening tale of seasonal dread from the acclaimed author of Anno Dracula. Cozy traditions are made twisted and terrifying as a mother and son grapple with their painful past.
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Book Details
ISBN:
9781835410677
EAN:
9781835410677
Binding:
Paperback
Pages:
160
Authors:
Kim Newman
Publisher:
Titan Books (UK)
I was fully immersed in this feverish nightmare! It was creepy, unnerving and towards the middle of the story I was teetering between reality and fantasy. Who was sending out these horrible Christmas cards? Why were Rust and Angie being tormented? The answers are a bit murky but nevertheless they made sense in the end - or did they? I enjoyed being submerged in this sinister tale!
A Christmas Ghost Story is a delightfully demented chilling mysterious ghost story within a story. It's dangerously addictive as you begin the haunting climb to the unexpected ending. It's a book which should be read in the daylight only... at night if you are brave!It's the Christmas season in England for Rust, a teenager and his mother Angie, a struggling novelist. It's just the two of them and they don't have much but come Christmas they splurge! But this Christmas everything seems to be off, and they don't quite understand what is going on. Their first hint of a problem is when on December 1 Rust opens the first day of his advent calendar and there is something wrong with the taste of the chocolate.Then, they begin to receive unsigned Christmas cards with ominous poetic writings in them. Rust wants to throw them out but Angie for some reason feels scared by doing that so they begin to put them on their mantel. Each day.They try to figure out if this is some sort of a sick joke and even attempt to fool the writer of the cards and try to see who is putting them in their mailbox and on their property with no luck. They begin to feel it must be a ghost, but really, they are both too sensible. Each card is more frightening than the previous.Worse, strange things begin to happen to them and their surroundings. Rust feels sick after eating the chocolate. A strange plant begins to overtake their backyard. And the Christmas turkey, well it just goes bad in the refrigerator.But Angie fears she knows what's happening and it has something to do with when she was a child and she secretly watched a Christmas horror story on the television without her parents knowing after they had gone to bed. More importantly is if she is correct, Rust is in danger. She must figure out how to stop this.As she searches the internet for clues of the story she watched, she finds nothing. It's as if it never existed. Did she imagine the whole thing? And as the days towards Christmas get closer, her fears grow because she knows what happens on December 25. How do they stop this?A Christmas Ghost Story is a spine-chilling tale in which you won't know the outcome until the very end. How can such a happy time take such a terrible turn? Well, you will certainly find out!
I absolutely adore a spooky ghost story, especially one themed around christmas. This book was seasonal, fun, and mysterious all at once. I thought the story unfolded in a way that kept me hooked from start to finish, and I could not recommend this book more. Very fun.
What a creepy little invasive nightmare of a tale! The whole time reading this I felt off-center, as if I were in some not-quite-real dreamscape created by a madwoman.At its base, it's a simple story of recurring spooky Christmas cards that arrive daily and a (possibly) imagined television show from the past.I'm not quite sure what happened at the end, but it was in line with the tone of the whole story. All in all, a really interesting, unusual, quirky tale. I look forward to more of Newman's books.
A CHRISTMAS GHOST STORY almost lost me in the first two dozen of so pages...It was just a tad TOO British for my liking, or my understanding. Newman, as he is sometimes wont to do, throws the reader into a maelstrom of Brit slang, rhymes, catch-phrases, and references, which rendered the opening portion of the book all but impenetrable to me. I either got used to it, or he toned it down, because I found myself greatly enjoying the middle section, before getting to an ending that seemed, to me, rushed and abrupt. The relationship between the mother and son is well-defined and enjoyable, and the meat of the story drew me in, but Newman kind of lost me at the end, taking the book from "EXCELLENT!" territory to "I can just about recommend it.". It made for some fun reading in the nights leading up to Christmas, for sure.
