"The Voice Upstairs" by Laura E. Weymouth

 That. Was. Creepy.

(Rubbing my arms and trying to shake off the goosebumps.)

A haunted nursery.

Disembodied voices singing childhood rhymes.

Bed covers being slowly pulled off while you sleep.

Nightmares about corpses coming out of the walls.

 

(Another shiver)

If you're looking for a creepy paranormal mystery, then "The Voice Upstairs" definitely fits the bill.

Wilhelmina Price has never fit in with the other village people of Thrush's Green. Ever since her mother's untimely death. Wil has had the gift, or curse, of being able to see a person's spirit leaving their body days or even hours before their death. When Wil first realized she had this ability, she tried to warn people of their impending demise. Of course, they didn't believe her, and when those people actually started dying, the village people came to fear and despise Wil for her "unholy" gift. 

As a result, Wil has only ever had one true friend: Edison Summerfield, the youngest son of a local Lord.

When a maid on the Summerfield estate dies in the same suspicious way that Wil's mother did, Wil decides she is going to get a job as a maid on the Summerfield Estate and use her gift to find out what happened to the maid, and ultimately, what happened to her mother.

But Ed Summerfeld has been keeping a secret from Wil. 

He's being haunted.

Eerie noises. Disembodied voices. Furniture moving. Doors slamming. Frightening Dreams.

Ed believes he is being haunted by the spirit of his dead brother, Peter, who died in the war. However, no one experiences any of these events except for him. This terrifies Ed because if Wil, with her connection and power over the dead, can't sense that he is being haunted, then it means his family is right and he is losing his mind. 

Set in the 1920's, this historical paranormal murder mystery was a highly entertain read. I read it in one day. I definitely enjoyed the creepy vibes that the haunting created, and the twist ending caught me off guard. 

An elegant ghost story with a sweet romance intertwined. 

"Hatchet Girls" by Diana Rodriguez Wallach

Lizzie Borden took an ax. 

And gave her mother forty whacks, 

And when she saw what she had done, 

She gave her father forty-one.

This book would have made an excellent horror movie!

I love horror stories that are inspired by true events.  I love making connections between the true story and the author's reimagined story as they twist and mold those events into something completely new.

"Hatchet Girls" is based on the real life events of the Borden family.  The Borden family was a rich and prosperous family, but not a very happy one. Andrew Borden, the father and family patriarch, was a somber and tight fisted man who like to control his money and his family. His first wife passed away when his two girls were quite young, and he eventually remarried a woman named Abby. 

No one really knows what happened that fateful day, but the popular belief is that Lizzie Borden just snapped. She was fed up with her father controlling every aspect of her life, so while he was out, she went upstairs to her stepmother's room and killed her with an axe, striking her multiple times. Her father came home later, having no idea of his wife's fate, and laid down on the couch to rest. While he was resting, Lizzie Borden killed him with the axe as well. 

However, Lizzie Borden was never convicted for these murders. 

During the trial, there was never enough information to prove that Lizzie was the murderess, and fingers were also pointed at Lizzie's uncle and even disgruntled business partners as the potential murderers. 

So someone got away with murder.

"Hatchet Girls" is a novel inspired by the mystery surrounding the Borden family and intertwines those events with the supernatural as history repeats itself in a present day setting.  

One hundred years after the Borden murders, tragedy has struck again. 

In the town of River Falls, a wealthy businessman and his wife have been murdered in their upscale home that is located just miles from the historic Lizzie Borden home. And when Tessa's older brother Vik is the prime suspect in the double homicide, Tessa knows she is going to have to do everything in her power to prove his innocence and expose the real murderer.

Tessa's hunt for the truth leads her into the dark history of River Falls, and the supposedly cursed forest that her brother was hiking in on the night of the murders. There is something different about that forest, something sinister.  

Did something happen to her brother that night in those woods? Or is some sinister force reaching out from the beyond to ensure that history repeats itself?

Gothic vibes, VERY creepy descriptive scenes, and a engaging method of storytelling that flashes back and forth between the night of the murder and the aftermath makes this a quick and compelling read. 

Perfect for fans who love horror, murder mysteries and the supernatural.