The House of Velvet and Glass by Katherine Howe

This book was an enjoyable piece of historical fiction, with a speculative side. It starts as fairly straight historical fiction about a rich Boston family struggling to cope with the deaths of its mother and sister on the Titanic (a slightly implausible premise anyway because only four of the women in first class died; most made it to life boats). But as the story moves back towards the father's experiences shipping in China and forward to the other daughter's interests in spiritualism, it gradually becomes apparent that there's more going on than at first appeared. I found the twist disorienting, and while I liked the Salem connection (which seems, at least, to put this book in the same universe as The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane), I think I would have liked a bit more payoff on the Titanic angle.

Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphor, and Media into the Twenty-First Century by Marina Warner

This book investigates representations of the spirit and the supernatural, starting early but really hitting its stride around the early eighteenth century and continuing into the twenty-first century. It considers representations of the self and a spiritual presence in material (wax, cloud, photographs, film) and immaterial (ether, air, ectoplasm) forms. The book casts a wide-ranging net to gather its evidence--we see examples drawn from art, literature, material culture, and many other places. Generally it argues that despite our increasing understanding of the processes in the world and our increasing secularization, we still need, perhaps more than ever, representations of spirit. I thought the last chapter, on zombies, was particularly effective. The book had a refreshing tone--it treats moments of spiritualism (like knocking, expulsion of ectoplasm, etc.) as moments to be studied for their interpretative value, not as phenomena to be definitively proven or disproven.

Ghosts I Have Been by Richard Peck

This book is about Blossom Culp, a young girl who lives in the Midwest in 1913. She's got the Second Sight and the main plot of the book is about how she sees the ghost of a British boy who died on the Titanic and gets to visit the Queen as a result. I found the plot a little bit slow, but I really like Blossom and her friends Miss Dabney and Alexander Armsworth.

Affinity by Sarah Waters

I enjoyed this book, though I found the ending completely surprising. It really examines the way that people related to each other and why people help each other. I found Margaret's family hideous, but I was left wondering whether her choices didn't contribute to her misery. I enjoyed the twist at the end, but if this book were a mystery, I would think the author had left a bit too much out for the reader to be able to make a fair conclusion.

Angelica by Arthur Phillips

I enjoyed this story, which is told four times and remains ambiguous at its end. I appreciate that Phillips leaves it for the reader to decide whether there really was a ghost, whether Joseph Barton is cruel, Anne a con woman, or Constance hysterical, or a little of all. The story did not hang together quite as well as The Tragedy of Arthur or The Egyptologist, but it certainly leaves the reader with something to think about.