THE SHADOW CABINET

Transplanted Southerner Rory must once again save London, but this time her foes aren't all completely dead.

Upon a less-than-graceful exit from Wexford, her posh London boarding school, Rory is now on the run with the Shades, a clandestine band of police who attend to supernatural phenomena. Stephen, a member of the Shades (and her last kiss), hangs in a precarious state between life and death. With her amplified abilities to both see the dead and possess the power of a mystical stone, Rory could help Stephen. Unfortunately, Jane, a crazed occultist and Rory's ex-therapist, wants to harness Rory's powers and use them to perform the Rites of Demeter in hopes of defeating death and resurrecting two powerful magicians. Rory's London is one where death is but tenuously separated from life, and she must use her abilities to save not only her own friends, but now the city at large. This deftly plotted and richly developed third installment skillfully weaves together the plotlines from its predecessors, creating a carefully and engrossingly built world. Moving away from what could have easily been a predictable, cookie-cutter ghost-busting template in every book, the series has gracefully evolved into a heady mix of ghost story, myth, conspiracies and history.

Creepy, tense and wonderful: Don’t expect to put this down once it's begun—but be sure to begin with The Name of the Star (2011).