Shadow Grave

Written by Marina Cohen

Roaring Brook Press

978-1-250-78300-4

288 pp.

Ages 8-12

May 2022

 

The trip to a New Hampshire bed-and-breakfast for twelve-year-old Arlo and his eight-year-old sister Lola with their mother for Thanksgiving is supposed to be a treat. With their father remarried with a new child and Mom dealing with health issues and Arlo managing anxiety, the family needs a break. And with money being an issue–they're driving Mom's old clunker of a car–everything is being done on a budget. But when something jumps into the road and they end up hitting a tree and totalling the car, their family trip takes an unexpected turn. 

The trio have no option but to seek help, especially as Mom's ankle may be broken and their one working cell phone cannot get a signal. Following the road that eventually becomes little more than a footpath, they reach the town of Livermore, an isolated community that almost feels deserted. In fact, when they finally get someone to open their door, the woman tells them, "You've come to the wrong place." (pg. 37) But Lovicia, with the urging of her young niece Hannah, lets them in and summons Doc Brown to tend to Arlo and Lola's mom. Everything's a little bit old-fashioned from the plaster cast Mom is given to the pot over a fire in the hearth but it's the lack of automobiles or phones that poses the greatest concern. And then Arlo hears some one say, "Leave now. While you still can." (pg. 46) With one last call to his Dad before their phone dies, the family is put up at the Samuels' B &B, a large mansion of Mr. Woodbridge Samuels, his young daughter Alice, and housekeeper Mrs. Hawthorn. They also meet all the community who join them for a Thanksgiving meal but, even though they are polite enough, Arlo feels the townspeople are somewhat reserved, perhaps even unwelcoming.

It was as though their warm smiles and formal manners hid their true feelings, like sweet perfume masks the stench of sweat. (pg. 87)

What their superficial politeness and old-fashioned natures hide is far more creepy than even Arlo and his family could anticipate, and whether or not they can get out of Livermore safely is part of the mystery of Shadow Grave.

Author Marina Cohen has always given us a little bit of creepy blended with the realism of family relationships, mental health, and more. With Shadow Grave, she again delivers us to a surreal world, this one the town of Livermore with its eerie inhabitants, time-frozen settings and dark unknowns, while integrating it with the familiar as Mom battles a life-threatening illness, Arlo struggles with his anxiety and the whole family is challenged with rebuilding after divorce. So while Marina Cohen has given us another solid middle-grade horror novel (check out my favourites The Inn Between, The Doll's Eye and Chasing the White Witch),  Shadow Grave has infused a story with ghost-like entities, monsters, and unknown dangers with the reality of a family's challenges, thereby also drawing in readers with the fears of every day life. She reminds us that some times the terrors we feel are both familiar and alien. 

Enter Livermore with caution. There are monsters of different kinds but, if you face them as Arlo does, with positive thoughts, trust and family, you may just get out alive.

A Box of Bones: Guest blog post

Today's review has been submitted by Grade 6 student Bronte L.

Written by Marina Cohen
Roaring Brook Press
978-1-250-17221-1
288 pp.
Ages 8-12
May 2019

In Marina Cohen’s book A Box of Bones, the main character, Kallie, is very logical and intelligent for her age, yet she lacks imagination. When her beloved grandfather takes her to the Festival of Fools, she doesn’t enjoy it as much as the other visitors do. During the Festival, a faceless man in a fedora gives Kallie a wooden box. Later, she figures out that the box is a puzzle. Against her father's advice, she starts solving the puzzle, and uncovering secrets. Finally she finds the right combination and unleashes something that seems like magic.

While Kallie tries to figure out what’s happening to her world, Liah, a young bone carver, goes on a long journey with her master to sell bone carvings to the empress.  On the journey, she ends up accidentally wrecking a valuable cup that her master made.  She tries to hide this fact from her master along the way.  Although Kallie and Liah's worlds are far apart in time and place, their stories connect in many ways. 

A Box of Bones by Marina Cohen is great for readers in Grades 4-8 seeking a book full of adventure and suspense. It's a book on developing friendships and uncovering family secrets. The large font, short chapters and 281 pages makes it great for a light read. The cliff hangers will make you stay up past your bedtime. The emotional description is fantastic.

Out of ten, I would give A Box of Bones an 8. I loved how the two worlds intertwined. Trying to put together all of the clues and secrets made me feel like a sleuth. All of the characters are original and interesting, their back stories are emotional and deep. Both worlds had their share of drama and suspense. This book gives the reader many chances to draw connections and imagine a new and exciting world.  Once you read this book, you will be drawn into the magic of it all.

~ Bronte L.

A Box of Bones

Written by Marina Cohen

Roaring Brook Press

978-1-250-17221-1

288 pp.

Ages 8-12

May 2019

Sometimes people need lies. Little lies to help them deal with truths that are too huge and too difficult to face. (pg. 273)

Twelve-year-old Kallie is only interested in facts and the organized and logical world that she and her father, who works in risk management for an insurance company, live in. She has no appreciation for the arts, turning her nose up at music and seeing stories as "ugly little lies wrapped in pretty packages" (pg. 59), going so far as to refer to her dead mother only with disdain as "The Writer." Unfortunately, the world seems to want something different for her than she expects.

While at the buskers' Festival of Fools with her Grandpa Jess, Kallie is handed a small puzzle box seemingly made of bone. After much work to open it, nine smaller cubes fall out of the box, each with its own unique image. Strangely, no matter how she drops these cubes, they always land in the same order: an animal, a goblet, an oval with holes, a castle, a cylinder with flames, a coffin, a skull, a long pointed object, and a blank. Soon, Kallie's life, thrown off kilter by a new imaginative student named Anna and by secrets she is learning regarding her mother's death, is following a path based on those bone images, starting with a strange animal with amethyst eyes that appears to her.

Interspersed with Kallie's story is one of Liah, a bone carver's apprentice. In her story, distinguished to the reader by its italics font, Liah and the bone carver are heading to the evil Empress's palace to sell his carvings, travelling through an ancient forest haunted by those whose bones were buried without ancestral care. Heedless of the bone carver's warnings, Liah removes a skull, hopeful of carving something special from it. But their foray into the palace becomes something dangerous for the bone carver and Liah after a Lie-peddler they meet confronts the Empress with his stories.

There is such a thing as too much truth. (pg. 272)

How Kallie's and Liah's journeys are related is only revealed at the end of Marina Cohen's latest middle grade novel but they are entwined, both learning that

...a good story never really ends. It lives on inside you forever (pg. 222)

and that truths and lies are not very different, both necessary and still tenuous.

While Marina Cohen does creepy middle-grade really, really well–do check out several of her earlier novels such as The Inn Between (2016) and The Doll's Eye (2017)–A Box of Bones tells a great mystery without worries of keeping young readers up at night. There are eerie bits, both in Kallie's and Liah's stories, but they add to the mysteriousness, demonstrating that not everything is straightforward, logical or expected, just like life, and that stories give life as well as honour it.

The Doll's Eye

Written by Marina Cohen

Roaring Brook Press

978-1-62672-2040

208 pp.

Ages 8-12

February 2017

There’s a creepiness in the old house to which twelve-year-old Hadley Jackson and her mom, and mom’s new husband Ed Crenshaw and his six-year-old son Isaac have moved. 

A heaviness in the air seemed to press down on her.  And, despite the August heat, it was cold and clammy, like a years-unopened tomb. (pg. 2)

She even feels like she’s being watched, though it could simply be the doll’s eyeball she discovers beneath her bed.  But, with her mom giving the lion’s share of her attention to Isaac, a child with numerous food allergies, Hadley is feeling less than hospitable to Ed and Isaac.  When the girl discovers an old dollhouse, a replica of the actual house, with four carved dolls–a man, a woman, a little girl, and an older woman in the apartment over the garage– Hadley sees a perfect family, and wishes the same for herself.   But, as many a tale has taught us, you must be careful with wishes.

Though she still feels out of sorts–in fact, she’s feeling an odd numbness in her hand which is extending to other parts–Hadley meets a couple of individuals who make her start to feel at home: Gabe, a neighbour boy who knows everything about snakes and insects , and the elderly woman, Althea S. de Mone a.k.a. Granny, who lives over the garage.  Gabe comes over daily to play and take her on excursions into the ravine at the back and Granny invites her for tea and crumble and chats about the dolls which she admits to carving.

But things begin to get really strange when the people in her life begin to change as the dolls disappear and are replaced.  First, Ed and Isaac disappear like they’d never existed and all of Hadley’s mom’s attention is focused on her daughter.  Hadley knows it is related to her wish that Ed and Isaac had never come into her life and tries to make things right again but ends up with another more haunting scenario with a father she’d never known.  She knows it’s all tied to the doll’s eye and the dollhouse but making it right seems near impossible. 

Hadley barely made it to her bed before her knees gave out.  She lay for the longest time, thinking, rubbing her numb hands.  It was as though someone had wrinkled the fabric of reality, changing the pattern of its threads.  She closed her eyes.  Perhaps if she dozed off, she’d wake from the nightmare and things would be back to normal. (pg. 100)

As if.

In the subtle terror reminiscent of W.W. Jacob’s chilling short story "The Monkey’s Paw", Marina Cohen brings creepiness into making wishes and into a young girl’s desire for a perfect family.  Hadley is just a naïve young girl who thinks she knows what will make her life better, just like the young girl from the past whose reminiscences Marina Cohen includes throughout The Doll’s Eye. But, whether in the past or the present, the young girls in The Doll’s Eye make some selfish and poor choices that have impacts never imagined.

By implanting her story in the seemingly innocent entities of youth i.e., dolls and dollhouses, Marina Cohen will have young readers shocked when they enter the disturbing realm of horror. But I guess that’s what the genre is meant to do, frighten and disturb. Thankfully, it’s the right amount of fright for young readers, never too much or of the grotesque variety, and it will keep them edge-of-their-seats reading until the last page, never expecting the ending.  As a seasoned reader, I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t, and I expect younger readers won’t either, though they will be thrilled with Marina Cohen’s twisted take on making wishes and what a perfect family entails. But, more than anything, they will be beguiled with another offering by Marina Cohen to a genre rarely published for middle grade readers and a sensational and supernatural contribution at that.

The Inn Between

by Marina Cohen

Roaring Brook Press

978-1-62672-202-6

208 pp.

Ages 8-12

For release March 2016

Don’t be deceived by the gold and green turquoise lightness of the cover of The Inn Between.  The story is nothing but dark and I believe that Marina Cohen has achieved her goal of a Stephen King novel for middle grade readers.

Eleven-year-old Quinn Martin is travelling by car with her best friend Kara Cawston and Kara’s family–parents and older brother Josh–to the family’s new home in Santa Monica.  The two girls had been inseparable in Denver and the linking of their two woven frienship bracelets, which seems to intrigue the non-Norm man running Norm’s Diner, shows how close the two really are.  After a weird bright light in the desert accosts the family car, they stop at the Inn Between, a gorgeous old-fashioned hotel straddling the border between California and Nevada, that promises “We’ve been expecting you.” (pg. 28)

As beautiful as the hotel is, the people within are very strange (and this is an operative word for everything at the Inn Between) and oddly overly hospitable.  There’s the desk clerk Persephone, the elevator operator Sharon (for the elevaor they are not allowed to use) and the valet-doorman, Aides.  And the guests are just as odd. From old Mr. Mirabelli who tells Quinn “They’re going to pull the plug” (pg. 34) to the little girl with the singed doll and Rico the guy who’d partied a little too hard and had come for a rest.  Most scary though is a tall, unshaven man in a black and yellow ball cap whom Quinn notices pursuing them.

After the first night, Kara’s parents are gone, apparently with the van that had to be towed for servicing, and the three kids spend the time swimming, enjoying the food and just hanging out.  But Quinn’s mind is perpetually troubled with memories of her little sister Emma and the guilt she harbours about her, and smells and sounds at the hotel continue to play on these memories.

When Josh goes awol too, Quinn and Kara go in search of Emma, convinced the crying Quinn hears is her young sister who had gone missing.  But what they find starts Quinn realizing who the guests at the Inn Between really are and why they must escape, without Kara’s parents and Josh.

The Inn Between is a mermerizing read of creepiness and suspense with a healthy dose of action and psychological tension.  Young readers who never get enough of spine-chilling drama (and it is very limited in youngCanLit) will be pleasantly disturbed by the eerie story, unnerving setting, and sinister atmosphere of The Inn Between.  Marina Cohen has done it.  She has written a spooky–but ghost-free–story about a place you wouldn’t want to visit and wrapped it in a cosy hotel robe of mystery and unsettling thoughts, without completely terrifying young readers, though there are some frightening scenes.  Best of all, Marina Cohen has something to say about friendship and grief and guilt but does so in a wonderfully unique and  horrific narrative.

Marina Cohen: Author Interview

Marina Cohen, author of Chasing the White Witch, Mind Gap and Ghost Ride, all published by Dundurn Press, graciously agreed to answer a few questions for CanLitforLittleCanadians about her writing.

***

HK: Your newest book, Chasing the White Witch (Dundurn, 2011) has the main character, Claire, looking for solutions to her problems in a book of magic. What first gave you the idea for this plot?

MC: As a kid I always wished I had magical powers. As an adult I came to realize it's a really good thing I didn't! When I was young I was somewhat impulsive and, well, I had a bit of a temper. Add magic to that mix and I'm certain there would have been an awful lot of toads hopping around! The funny thing is, I did own a little book of magic spells. Believe it or not, they were giving them away at a gas station with the purchase of a full tank of gas!


HK: I think that there are so many great characters in the book, like Claire, Jordan, Hollis and Paula-Jean, that I'd love to read a follow-up book for a chance to see a different side to them. Do you foresee writing another book based on the characters in Chasing the White Witch?

MC: Although I wrote this particular book to be a stand-alone novel with no intent to create a series -- I could not help but play with these characters in my mind. A new plot may very well revolve around Claire desperately seeking funds to purchase a grade eight grad dress (one her parents refuse to buy!). Claire delves back into her little book and casts a good luck charm on herself. Needless to say, spells cast for personal profit go awry! Now all I need is a time-management spell for myself so I can write it!

HK: Your other books, Ghost Ride (Dundurn, 2009) and Mind Gap (Dundurn, 2011) also focus on the theme of making choices and dealing with the consequences. But Chasing the White Witch is very different from them in that it is so rich in humour. Was it easier or harder for you to write a book based in humour?

MC: First off, I'm thrilled you think this novel is humourous. I spent night after night at my kitchen table laughing myself silly as I wrote. My husband turned to me more than once and said, "Marina, no one will find this remotely funny." To which I'd respond, "Probably. But I'm having the best time writing it!" On a serious note, I think good humour is extremely difficult to write. I also believe great humourous novels can be undervalued. They are often dismissed as fluff when they have as much to offer a reader as a serious issue book or a fantasy or mystery etc.


HK: Do you have another book in the works or set for publication in 2012 or 2013?

MC: I don't have a book set for publication at this point. Though I currently have a manuscript on submission--a very creepy middle-grade. With a little bit of luck, it will find a home soon!


HK: Would you rather produce one book of extraordinary importance that becomes a classic but one to which all your writing is forever compared, or would you prefer to author many different books for different audiences and which could not be compared to each other?

MC: This is a fabulous question--one I've been mulling over for several days now. I'd love to create a work so rich in language and character, so exquisite in plot and theme that it would one day be deemed a classic. But honestly, I'm not sure I have that book in me. But also, if I could write such a novel, it would come with hefty a cost. To be forever compared to that one great novel (or series!) is extremely difficult for a writer. I, for one, am very excited to read J.K. Rowling's new novel. I intend not to compare it to Harry Potter -- though sadly, I'm sure many will.

 ***
  

Many thanks to Marina Cohen for granting me this interview and share her writing with us.

***

For more about author Marina Cohen and her books, check out her blog and website for more information including book trailers and contact links. 

Chasing the White Witch

by Marina Cohen

Dundurn

978-1-55488-964-8

157 pp.

Ages 8-12

2011

The old adage "Be careful what you wish for" should have been the title of the book that twelve-and-a-half-year-old Claire picks up at the grocery story.  But it isn't.  While Claire deals with her first pimple (extraordinarily perched at the end of her nose), enduring the relentless taunts of her fifteen-year-old brother, Jordan ("But I can't see you behind the mountain in front of your nose. Oh wait a minute - that is your nose!"; pg. 10) and then noticing her enemy, the beautiful and perfect Hollis Van Horn, is in the grocery store too, the little book that flutters to her feet is titled Remedies, Rituals and Incantations.  It must have been a sign - right? Claire thinks so.

Her first order of business is to get rid of that nasty pimple, and fortuitously there is an acne remedy in the little green book penned by the White Witch.  When the concoction (which includes yogurt, oatmeal, Limburger cheese and garlic) with the prescribed chant doesn't work, Claire reads the introduction (which she had ignored earlier) that states that the spellcaster must be pure of mind and spirit.  After cleansing herself by being helpful, meditating and taking a hot bath, the pimple is gone, and Claire is encouraged to co-opt her best friend, Paula-Jean, into performing an avenging spell on  Jordan.  The  spell works but Paula-Jean's uneasiness with the magic makes her aloof and ready to yield to Hollis' offer of friendship.  In reaction, impulsive Claire puts a hex on Hollis.  The unforeseen consequences of that act send Claire to team up with seriously-ill Hollis in order to locate the White Witch and learn how to make things right.  

Marina Cohen's earlier books (Ghost Ride, Dundurn, 2009; Mind Gap, Dundurn, 2011), both well received by readers, examine the serious consequences of choices made by young men.  In Chasing the White Witch, the theme is similar but I enjoyed the light-hearted manner in which Marina Cohen addresses it.  While the consequences of casting spells could be dire, the reader is fairly sure that the outcome of this story will not be tragic; after all, first you have to suspend disbelief to even accept that this magic works.  And Cohen's choice of materials (Limburger cheese?) and the farcical nature of the chanting suggest a story based in "make-believe" rather than reality.

But, it is the humour in the story that is most enchanting (pun intended), from Jordan and Claire's relationship (e.g., "Jordan could bungee-jump over cactuses using spaghetti as far as I was concerned."; pg. 16) to the publisher's name (Mixed Pickle Press) to Claire's imagination (e.g., "I had imagined the green crusty blotches and hobbit-feet and all.."; pg. 85) and her father's endless stream of aphorisms (If you kick a stone, you'll hurt your foot; pg. 29; Where you are going is more important than how fast you get there; pg. 69) and her reactions to them (e.g., "Please, Dad, I don't have time to do something as trivial as think"; pg. 70). As convinced as Claire is about her power to cast spells, her take on the circumstances is so authentic but impetuous that the reader is engaged in following her through to the end.

Though a short read at only 157 pages, which is often insufficient to develop any character well and fully, Chasing the White Witch introduces us to several distinct characters, namely Claire, Jordan, Paula-Jean and Hollis, who could easily return in a sequel.  By not tying up Chasing the White Witch's ending in a nice bow, Marina Cohen has created an opportunity to take these characters in a totally different direction and still delight the reader.

Mind Gap

by Marina Cohen
Dundurn Press
978-1-55488-801-6
168 pp.
Ages 12+
2011

There's teen angst and there's teen anguish.  Jake MacRae sadly is experiencing the second, probably because of the first.  At 14, Jake has been trying to fit in, through drinking, gambling and sneaking around, and now he and best-friend, Cole, are being recruited to make a delivery for the 5 King Tribe, a local gang.  With his father abandoning the family ten years earlier, and now Jake getting into trouble regularly, his mother seems to want him out too.  Trying to avoid making any decisions to Cole's and his mom's demands that he decide whether he is "in or out," Jake sneaks out to a midnight party meeting at St. George subway station, to take the southbound train at midnight.

But missing the train throws Jake into another world, one which first takes him to the past, to meet his father on the day he leaves, then later into the future and finally returning to the present.  This is no tale of Scrooge, with the joys and possibilities of Christmas, seeing his life as it could be.  This is a brief look into a darker world, in which things don't always turn out for the best and you see people as they truly are, not as they show themselves to you.

At one point, when Jake asks himself half-heartedly whether he was experiencing something from The Twilight Zone, he gives voice to the impending terror the reader experiences from the onset of Cohen's fourth novel.  Time-travel novels are ubiquitous but in Mind Gap the travel and the destinations are the stuff of nightmares, where your voice is unheard, your face unrecognizable or invisible, and your influence ignored. 

Cohen leaves no gaps in her story-telling, taking the reader forth on a chilling journey with multiple stops and an unknown destination, leaving no one doubting that there are always consequences to our decisions when asked, "In or out?"