Creepy Irish ghost story...

Three dead women are found by the postman in a house at the end of a lane, in a small town just outside Dublin. One woman died from having her head bashed in, presumably by the shovel found upstairs, next to the emaciated bodies of her two nieces who had been imprisoned, fed rat poison, and slowly starved to death. Shortly after the grisly discovery, Niall, an aspiring graphic artist who works at the post office, finds an unclaimed package in the dead letter bin, mailed by Fiona Walsh (one of the dead girls) to "anyone at all" in the post office. It turns out to be Fiona's diary, and once Niall opens the book and begins to read, he is dragged into a world of fairy tales and evil. Fiona and her sisters grew up in a town in West Cork, and Niall goes there to follow the story.

How much of the tale is fanciful or exaggerated? How much is just a romantic telling of something very real and horrible? Fiona and her sister are dead -- and so is their Aunt Moira. They all had been involved with a traveling storyteller named Jim. And it is Jim's story that forms the spellbinding tale which leads to the final chapter of doom.

Read this one with the lights turned down low -- to get into the mood of horror and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night. Or keep all the lights on to their full brightness so you won't get too freaked out. I give this book 3 1/2 stars for spinning such an intriguing yarn.