The Loveliest Dead »

To most people it's just a large house, old and a bit run-down. To the Kellar family it's a new start, a chance to wipe out the painful past and begin again. But soon it will become a living nightmare. The terrors begin before the Kellars have even finished unpacking. Who are the mysterious children playing on the rusty, vine-covered swing set in the backyard? Who is the figure sitting in the dark corner of the bedroom at night? Who --or what-- waits in the basement? They are the dead and they cannot rest. Horror stalks the halls of the Kellar house. And the secrets of the past are reaching from beyond the grave to destroy the living.

Publishers Weekly

In this ironically titled shocker from horror maestro Garton (Live Girls), the dead, who are pretty ugly, make life a hell for the living. Jenna and David Kellar, after a series of personal tragedies, the worst of which is the inexplicable death of their four-year-old son, Josh, hope to make a new start at the old family homestead they've inherited just outside Eureka, Calif., with their surviving son, Miles. Instead, they discover a nightmare. Ghostly children cavort mysteriously on the backyard swings and vanish at will. Tantalizingly, cruelly, one resembles Josh. After a slow start, the action pulls the reader into a frightening world of psychics, ouija boards and poltergeists. The scenario will remind many of Stephen King's The Shining, even though this workmanlike effort isn't in the same league as that classic. (Apr.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.