The Secret World Of Books

Scary stories for Young Readers (and for the Young at Heart) By Amy Bearce



It’s dark outside. Thunder rumbles, then rain begins to beat on the windows. You’re alone in the house.You snuggle under the covers and open your favorite scary book.Ghosts.Hauntings.Monsters.You smile, and keep reading. A few minutes later, you pause. Wait. What’s that sound? You listen harder. Is someone in the house with you?Your heart races. Your palms sweat.You turn on the overhead light, and check.It’s just you.No one’s there. Your fears poof into nothingness.The book had just scared you. A little.

So you snuggle down…and open the book up again.

What puts the oooh in spooky books? Why do some of us like to scare ourselves by reading stories of ghosts and monsters?

Part of the answer seems to lie in our brains. 

When we know we are in a safe environment, the fight or flight response triggered in a haunted house or while reading a scary book provides a wash of chemicals in the brain. Some of us respond differently…

By Love Divided
By Elizabeth St.John

Fiercely independent, Luce Apsley rejects the dazzling English court and an arranged marriage by her aristocratic family, and falls in love with a Roundhead soldier. Desperate to rebuild their lives, her mother embraces the Puritan cause and yet Luce’s beloved brother, Sir Allen Apsley, chooses to fight for king and joins the gallant Royalists. As England marches into civil war, Luce embraces Parliament's radical views and challenges the very core of the family's beliefs. When their influential Villiers cousins raise the stakes, King Charles demands a loyalty of Allen that could jeopardize them all. Allen and Luce face a devastating challenge. Will war unite or divide them? In the dawn of England’s rebellion, love is the final battleground.





In a civil war, there are no winners. Just desperate broken men who have seen things they wished could be unseen, and who have done things they would do anything to undo.
On the death of her husband, Lucy Ap…

The Beaufort Bride:  The Life of Margaret Beaufort (Beaufort Chronicles #1) By Judith Arnopp

As King Henry VI slips into insanity and the realm of England teeters on the brink of civil war, a child is married to the mad king’s brother. Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, takes his child bride into Wales where she discovers a land of strife and strangers. 
At Caldicot Castle and Lamphey Palace Margaret must put aside childhood, acquire the dignity of a Countess and, despite her tender years, produce Richmond with a son and heir.
While Edmund battles to restore the king’s peace, Margaret quietly supports his quest; but it is a quest fraught with danger.
As the friction between York and Lancaster intensifies 14-year-old Margaret, now widowed, turns for protection to her brother-in-law, Jasper Tudor. At his stronghold in Pembroke, two months after her husband’s death, Margaret gives birth to a son whom she names Henry, after her cousin the king. 
Margaret is small of stature but her tiny frame concea…

Blood and Ink By D. K. Marley

History shows Kit Marlowe died in a tavern brawl in Deptford in 1593, but did he? England is torn apart by religious metamorphosis and espionage. The stages of England and bright intellectual boys are used to bolster Queen Elizabeth I's reign and propagate the rising Protestant faith. At the age of eight, Christopher Marlowe, the muse's darling, is sucked into the labyrinth of secret spy rings, blood, murder, and betrayal, while his own ambition as England's favorite playwright slips further from his grasp.
As Christopher grows to manhood, he sinks further into the darkness, and a chance meeting with an unknown actor from Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare, sets him on a path of destiny; a fate of forced exile and the revelation that the real enemy is not the assassins of Rome, but a man who stared into his eyes and smiled. One he did not expect




“Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And t…