With the help of a servant girl, Pegg, Horace tries to discover why Eleanora's spirit has returned and how to help her find rest. Each photo, though, is marred by a blurred image-that of the woman's dead niece, Eleanora. In New York City in 1872, a young photographer's assistant, Horace Carpetine, is asked to take a photographic portrait of Mrs. Amie Rose RotruckĪ blustery evening calls for a good ghost story, and Newbery medalist Avi offers one thick with spooks and intrigue. In perhaps his best work yet, Avi has created a truly chilling tale that will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned and the lights are turned out. Horace and Pegg now need to figure out how to put Eleanora to rest before she destroys her adopted parents who caused her death. He has started to see Eleanora even without the use of a camera. Each photograph Horace takes shows progressively clearer images of the dead girl, but that is not what truly frightens Horace. Pegg, a servant of Eleanora's parents, claims the girl was murdered. When he sends Horace to help him with his latest scam, Horace is shocked to realize that one of his photographs contains the image of Eleanora, a girl who died under mysterious circumstances. Middleditch, a photographer who sometimes inserts ghostly images of loved ones to drum up more business from the grief-stricken.

Details about photographic processes add authenticity, while the book's somber ending will leave spines tingling. Mirroring both the style and themes of gothic novels of the period, the story takes ghastly and ghostly turns that challenge Horace's belief in reason. Suspense builds as the Von Machts' servant, Pegg, reveals secrets about the Von Macht family and explains that Eleanor's angry spirit, brought back into the world through the camera lens, may want revenge on both Mrs. Events depart from the expected when the ghost of Eleanora literally enters the picture, and Horace discovers his ability to capture departed souls on film. The plan is to make a tidy profit by producing a double exposure and offering her an unusual portrait, one incorporating a superimposed image of her dead daughter, Eleanora.

In the fall of 1872, 14-year-old narrator Horace Carpetine reluctantly becomes involved in his employer's scheme to dupe a superstitious client, wealthy Mrs.

Newbery Medalist Avi ( Crispin: The Cross of Lead) sets this intriguing ghost story in 19th-century New York City, where a photographer's apprentice has a horrifying run-in with a spirit bent on revenge.

The seer of shadows by avi