What Lives in the Woods

Lindsay Currie's What Lives in the Woods is a creepy mystery for 11 year olds about a summer in a mansion that everyone in town warns you away from.

What happens

Ginny wants to write mysteries like Agatha Christie. She's all signed up for a mystery-writing course with Erica, her best friend. Then Dad announces the family is spending a whole month in Michigan while he restores an old mansion called Woodmoor Manor.

Twenty-six rooms. No TV. Hardly any phone signal. And a forest all around it where, according to local legend, twisted creatures called Hitchhikers live in tunnels (and might ride home underneath your car).

Ginny has done her research, so she knows the stories before they even arrive. Dad insists they're just campfire tales. So why are people taking photos of the house from the car park?

Reading it, you're right there with Ginny as her imagination runs away with her. A faceless mannequin in the corner of her room. A ticking clock she can't find. A voice whispering her name!

Some scares have a simple answer. Her big brother Leo has found an old speaking tube in the wall, and he's having a brilliant time with it. That's what makes it so clever. You're never quite sure which noises are Leo and which aren't.

The family feel very real too. Mum's baking resolution is going badly (charred cookies, bread that smells like gym socks). Leo eats everything in sight. Dad is hiding something about the house, and Ginny knows it.

It's a proper spine-tingler, with a dark forest and a local boy who tells Ginny to be careful. These first chapters are more shivery than gory, so it suits a reader who likes being a little bit scared rather than terrified.

Perfect for anyone who reads with a torch under the covers!

What to read next

For more from the same author, try The Peculiar Incident on Shady Street, where another girl moves into a very old house in Chicago and her sketchbook starts filling up with marks she didn't make.