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    The Night Strangers
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    The Night Strangers
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    The Night Strangers
    Ebook464 pages8 hours

    The Night Strangers

    By Chris Bohjalian

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    It begins with a door in a dusky corner of a basement in a rambling Victorian house in northern New Hampshire. A door that someone has sealed it shut with thirty-nine enormous carriage bolts.

    The home's new owners are Chip and Emily Linton and their twin daughters. Chip was an an airline pilot until he was forced to crash land on a remote lake the jet he was flying after double engine failure. Thirty-nine people aboard Flight 1611 died that day - a coincidence not lost on Chip when he discovers the number of bolts in that basement door . . .

    Meanwhile, his wife is increasingly troubled about the women in this sparsely populated village, self-proclaimed 'herbalists'. Why do they seem excessively interested in her young daughters. Emily is terrified, too, that her husband's grip on sanity seems to have become increasingly tenuous, in the wake of the devastating plane accident.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster UK
    Release dateNov 24, 2011
    ISBN9780857206749
    Unavailable
    The Night Strangers
    Author

    Chris Bohjalian

    Chris Bohjalian is the author of twelve novels, including the New York Times bestsellers, Secrets of Eden, The Double Bind, Skeletons at the Feast, and Midwives.  His work has been translated into twenty-six languages.  He lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.   Visit him at www.chrisbohjalian.com or www.facebook.com .

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    Reviews for The Night Strangers

    3.5/5

    445 ratings83 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Lesson learned: don't read reviews before reading the book. I know this; I just sort of forget sometimes. Don't do that. There's a lot of negativity out there about this book – and spoilers.Totally pointless note to start: I'm a little disappointed; when I kept hearing "carriage bolts" I pictured flat door bolts. In fact, they're just ("just") basically screws on steroids. I wish this had been purely and concentratedly the story of this little traumatized family and the big creepy house they relocated to, and the little door in the basement with the extraordinarily excessive thirty-nine carriage bolts securing it. The little door to, apparently, nowhere.I wish this had been the story of the voices the family – some of them – hear, and the subtle effect the house has on them. Of the investigation into what happened there, and of the axe and the knife and the crowbar, and the twins who had lived there years ago.I wish this had not been the story of the "herbalists" of the small Pennsylvania town. It felt in places like a 60's horror movie, for some reason, with this exclusive, evil club plotting terrible things for a child. It was incredibly creepy that just about everyone in the little town the family has moved to simply know everything about them. Chip or Emily meet someone for the first time, and that person will very casually reveal some piece of information about the family which they not only should have no way of knowing but have no business knowing. It's also deeply creepy that everyone – especially all of the flower-and-herb-named women – are so fixated on the twins. The prepubescent twin girls. It's extremely unsettling for everyone to know everything about them, and to engage them the way they did. I do wish, however, that the author didn't borrow a page from the mystery or fantasy novels that always annoy me by showing the villains' point of view. Here it is the herbalists who get POV's, pondering how useful prepubescent, traumatized twin girls would be in whatever creepy things they planned. Of course they don't perceive themselves as evil; after all, that other child who died wasn't supposed to die, and really if a child dies isn't it a fair price for all the benefits so many people derive? If anything, for me it canceled out a lot of the creepiness. I felt it would have been much more effective if point of view had stuck firmly to the family.And the ending – which I'm not going to talk about, don't worry – was almost exactly what I would not have chosen to do had I written this.The narrative used a typical omniscient third person past tense narration for the viewpoints of most of the characters, and a present-tense second person POV for Chip, the pilot. It worked well to emphasize his separation from his family and new neighbors in his grief and confusion and pain – and haunting. In the audiobook, everyone in the third person is read by Alison Fraser, who while not one of my very favorite narrators does a nice job; the little girls' voices are managed without being annoying, which is a coup. And Chip is read by Mark Bramhall. I was ambivalent about his narration for a while, as his inflections felt off now and then … but as the story developed I appreciated him more and more, and now I can't imagine anyone else doing it. The transition from affable Chip to the voice of the menacing ghost – a snarling growl that is quite possibly the very last thing I would ever want to hear in the dark – horrifying. Well done.
    • 4/5
      The sheer variety of subjects covered by this author is quite astonishing. In this one, we have a graphic plane crash juxtaposed with some full-on weird herb abuse in a small New England community. There is also a healthy dose of the supernatural at play. It was perhaps a mistake to read this book just a week or so before a transatlantic flight. The very impressive description of the air crash at the novel’s heart was very much on my mind as we took off, and it took me a while to shake myself free. This is quite an exciting read when all’s said and done; different, very original. But the ending won’t please many people. Me included!
    • 2/5
      Chip Linton is an airline pilot who's airplane is struck by birds while in flight. Despite his and his crew's best efforts, nearly all of the people on board the craft, thirty nine, are killed. Crippled by PTSD and unable to contemplate flying again, Chip, his wife Emily and their twin daughters move to New Hampshire to start over. But their beautiful fixer upper isn't all it seems. In one corner of the basement is an oddly shaped door, sealed shut with thirty nine carriage bolts. Soon Chip starts to see and even speak with some of the dead passengers on the plane. Are they figments of his imagination or ghosts? As Chip struggles with this inner threat, an equally sinister threat from outside the house emerges to threaten his children. The Night Strangers should have been a better book. But in the end it feel apart because it was really two stories. On one hand there was a fairly spine tingling ghost story about an airline captain haunted by three souls from his doomed craft. Then somewhere in the middle of the that a second story started to emerge. A coven of witches, seemingly normal, who crave the blood of one of this twin daughters to use in a potion to keep them young. Both plots were interesting and would have made good books, separately. Together they seemed at odds with each other and bloated the entire novel. The worst part was the epilogue, which managed to unravel any character development readers had seen from Chip and Emily up to that point. I don't need a happy ending as a reader, but a reasonable one would at least be nice.
    • 4/5
      Warning: DO NOT pick up this book to read on an airplane. It prominently features and keeps revisiting a tragic plane crash in incredible detail. This was one of those books that I couldn't put down. It centers around a family in the midst of tragedy that buys an old Victorian House in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. They are desperate for a fresh start, so it's not until they move in that they notice the strange door in the basement that's has been securely covered using 39 carriage bolts. The father, with PTSD and some features of depression and psychosis, is staying at home to fix up the house and becomes obsessed with knowing what's on the other side of this door. The town of Bethel seems a bit unusual as well. There's a large group of women that all have names that are flowers or herbs (Sage and Clary, for example) and they all own beautiful greenhouses teeming with exotic and domestic plants. Some say they are witches. The women take special interest in the children of this new family - twin girls - and take them under their wings to teach them their knowledge about the plants that they so carefully cultivate.This novel's plot is constantly moving forward and I found myself breathless in so many places. The description of the plane crash is so vivid, as are the thoughts and fears of the passengers and pilot aboard. As a new mother, my heart broke for some of the passengers and their stories, and I found myself tearful and hugging my babies a little closer. This was my first Bohjalian, and if his other novels are anything like this one, it won't be my last.
    • 4/5
      Great writing. That's what really kept me interested. Of course,being a reader of thrillers for 40 plus years I kinda figuredout what was going on not the far into the book. It was confirmed 2/3 into the book.I did not really like the ending but it was inevitable.
    • 1/5
      Disappointing!
    • 4/5
      This was my first Chris Bohjalian novel. I picked it up because I like a good horror story now and again. I listened to this on audio CD over the course of a couple of weeks while driving my twelve year old daughter to and from school. It gave us something to listen to other than same Lady Gaga song ad nauseam. Other than a small sex scene of an R nature half way through which I fast forwarded through, it was appropriate for her to listen to. If I hadn't being listening in the car while driving and otherwise not able to occupy myself with anything else I might have given up. The set up of the story is glacially slow and the pacing of the story is not good. Nothing happens for the first 3/4 of the book and then the ending when everything finally happens feels rushed. There was way too much focus on the plane crash, over and over and not enough back story on the herbalists. I like stories that dole out the horror in bits along the way so you feel the mounting terror. There isn't anything scary about an old lady delivering vegan casseroles which is what dominated the first half of the novel. After finally hunting around I found a review which actually told where the story was going. If I hadn't found it I might have given up.The story centers around Chip and Emily Linton and their twin daughter Haley and Garnet. Chip was a pilot of a plane that crashed into a lake but unlike Sully Sullenberger's miracle on the Hudson, not everyone gets to walk away alive. To start over the family leaves Pennsylvania and moves to rural New Hampshire. Chip is preoccupied with three of the dead passengers from the plane crash who decide to make the move with them and Emily is busy getting to know the ladies of the town who are known as herbalists. Everything is fine at first but soon the ladies realize that they can use the twins for their own purposes. Stupid Emily and Chip ignore whatever warnings they are given by non herbalist towns people and they continue along their self absorbed ways oblivious the horror that is being planned for their daughters. Ten year old Garnet had more of a clue as to the sinister nature of the herbalists than her own mother. I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with the bad parenting decisions made by Chip and Emily. Chip is being haunted by ghosts so I can kind of give him a pass but Emily is just walking around with blinders on. By the time she finally tunes in it is far too late. The most poignant part of the whole book for me was when Ashley met her grandmother in heaven. I really hope heaven is a beach where your loved one greets you when your time on earth is done. PS to Chris, Ashley was way to old to have that Dora the Explorer backpack. That is something carried by a 3 or 4 year old. Anyone who goes to school is no longer interested in Dora, find the banana tree right next to you, Explorer. I found my self disengaged with most of the rest of the book. Even when the horror filled ending was going down I just kind of had the feeling that you stupid people got what you deserved rather than any real sympathy for them. And as for that ending, mmmm I really want to read some more reviews that discuss that epilogue. Bohjalian went with a divisive ending. If you can stick with the slow moving pace of this book I think there is a lot a horror fan will find worth reading. At times the book felt like a homage to Stephen King the master of the genre. Unfortunately Bohjalian did not quite reach the master's level though it was an admirable effort.One last thing, the narrators of the story on CD did a fantastic job. They really gave life to the characters. i also greatly enjoyed the interview the author gave at the conclusion of the story telling how he got the idea for the book. He also gave a shout out to two of my all time favorite books, Into Thin Air, and the The Perfect Storm.
    • 3/5
      I didn’t write this review right away. I couldn’t. I needed time to process it. This novel took possession of my thoughts, it dominated them. I thought about The Night Strangers every waking minute. Sadly, I’m not sure if it was because the novel was that good or that disappointing. I am relatively new to Chris Bohlajian’s work, this being my second with The Double Bind my first. I loved the Double Bind. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for this one. Mr. Bohlajian is a master of mystery. He has an uncanny ability to write about emotions in a way that you as the reader experience them too. I also loved how he infused a perfect amount of creepy through the pages. I thoroughly enjoyed a few things about this novel. The first being the relationship between Emily and Chip. You could feel the genuine love they felt for each other, especially in Emily’s protection of Chip. Secondly, Reseda was a character I wish I had known. She seemed to genuinely care for Emily and the twins. And finally Chip. I loved Chip. I thought Mr. Bohlajian did an incredible job of adding realism to his character. There were times it read more as an emotional realistic account of what happened and not a work of fiction. Chip was flawed, troubled, and carried around the guilt of not going down with his “ship.” We all know the heroic effort of Captain Sully, Chips efforts were no less heroic but tragically his end result was catastrophic.There was one aspect of The Night Strangers that felt a bit off the mark for me. A part of me wishes this had been more about Chip’s demons rather than the mysterious Herbalists (the witches) that live in Bethel. Although the stories merge in the end, one clearly dominated the other. The witches were too farfetched, they distracted me from the Captain’s battle with his demons. It’s not that the witches portion of the story was bad, far from it. But oddly this novel would have been better as two separate tales instead of one. However I can’t imagine having one without the other. The one thing I totally give him credit is the very ending of the novel had that catch my breath, exploding stomach feeling I was hoping for. It was the same feeling I got at the end of Double Bind, and that same feeling is what will keep me reading Mr. Bohlajian for years to come.
    • 3/5
      What a nicely done ghost story, especially after reading the milquetoast The Woman in Black by Susan Hill.

      This was a truly gripping, suspenseful and scary book. The ghosts were believable and the witchcraft seemed very plausible. I was looking for a few twists and turns that turned out not to be, but this was a straightforward telling of a good old-fashioned ghost story. The use of language was well done and stayed true to the storyline; for example, tincture, sibilant, liminal and obfuscation. The references to arcane devices like the vertical chamber apparatus had me dashing to the internet for a better understanding. Even simple household items, like the dining room chandelier containing light bulbs shaped like faces lent to the electric air for the reader.

      Well done, Mr. Bohjalian!

      Recommended.
    • 4/5
      Chris Bohjalian is the author I recommend to people ready to graduate from Jodi Picoult. He tends to throw in an "issue" and build a page-turning story with good characters and good prose (much better than Picoult on both counts). If he were a breakfast cereal, he would be both good for you and delicious.This latest is a departure, and is quite delicious indeed: a nail-biting supernatural suspense tale that's something of a mashup of The Shining, Rosemary's Baby and The Wicker Man. Chip Linton is a pilot who lost 39 passengers when he tried and failed to effect a Sullenberger-style emergency landing on Lake Champlain. He suffers from PTSD, understandably enough, and he and his wife decide that a move to a new state would be therapeutic for all. They buy an old Victorian with a back staircase, a mysterious door in the cellar, and ghosts. Not to worry, they and their twin girls are well looked after by the nice lady "herbalists" of the town. No, wait - worry.This was a lot of fun to read, probably bad for my blood pressure, and sometimes genuinely creepy/scary, a dark pleasure I seldom get from books nowadays.
    • 4/5
      Traumatized after crashing his plane in an emergency landing over water,Captain Chip Linton and his wife Emily, and their two twin daughters move to the mountains of New Hampshire. The move is a fresh start and a chance to put the crash behind Chip, who suffers from a bad case of survivor's guilt. They quickly realize that things are different in the small town of Bethel. People are different. This was a really creepy book with an ending that I had to read more than once.
    • 5/5
      Chip Linton is an airline pilot who is forced to bring his plane down in Lake Champlain after a bird strike takes out both of his engines. Sound familiar? It should, as hero captain Sully Sullenberger is the first specter in this novel. His feat is firmly planted in Chip’s mind as he points his plane towards the lake. Unfortunately, the results are much different.What follows is a record of Chip’s unraveling, hastened by an unfortunate move to a small New Hampshire town where his house isn’t the only thing that may be haunted. Being familiar with what small town New England feels like, Bohjalian has once again brought that experience to life. When your neighbors number few, is it possible for them to be just a little too friendly?For me, the most interesting thing about this book is the way it was written. Bohjalian uses the second person point of view, where the narrator is referred to as “you”, when he writes from Chip’s point of view. It’s a very rarely used point of view, mostly because it’s so difficult to use well, and I was skeptical at first. Through a brief twitter exchange with the author (@ChrisBohjalian), he revealed that it hoped it would convey immediacy and disorientation, and I think he was extremely successful. You are drawn straight into Chip’s head, and even when you know that the things he sees and thinks are not possible, even crazy, you believe them as much as he does.This ended up being my favorite Chris Bohjalian novel in years, and I’ve read almost all of them! Don’t go into it thinking you know how it will all turn out – you couldn’t be more wrong.
    • 3/5
      Pilot Chip Linton is plagued by the guilt he feels after an unsuccessful water landing claimed the lives of 39 of his passengers and crew. He and his wife Emily and their 10-year-old twin daughters decide to start over and move to a rambling old Victorian house in a small town in New Hampshire. But Chip, suffering from PTSD, phantom pains, and depression, does not find rest and respite in their new home. He quickly becomes obsessed with a strange door in the basement—a door bolted shut with exactly 39 heavy-duty carriage bolts. When Chip’s phantom pains increase, he begins to understand that what he’s feeling are the fatal injuries sustained by three crash victims—a young woman, and a father and daughter. The three begin appearing to Chip and the dead father attempts to convince Chip to kill his own daughters to provide playmates for the dead girl. Meanwhile, Emily is being befriended by a group of women in the town, all of whom are named for plants, all of whom have greenhouses filled with strange and exotic herbs and flowers, and all of whom have a very unusual and sinister interest in the Linton twins. The Night Strangers is slow-starting, with a gradual and inexorable build-up to the truly creepy ending. However, many readers may wish Bohjalian had focused more on either the ghost story or the herbalists’s plot, the two stories being so unrelated outside of their cast that at times it feels one is reading two different books at once.
    • 3/5
      Audiobook performed by Alison Fraser and Mark Bramhall

      Chip Linton suffers from PTSD after the plane he was piloting struck a flock of geese and went down in Lake Champlain, killing 39 people. In an effort to get a new start and escape the scrutiny of the press and public, he and his wife, Emily, move with their twin girls to a small town in New Hampshire. They’re welcomed by the small law firm Emily joins and the ladies of the town who all seem to be avid gardeners and herbalists. But an odd little door in a corner of the basement of their Victorian home puzzles Chip; it’s sealed shut with 39 carriage bolts. When he breaks through that door things quickly get very strange.

      I’ve read several of Bohjalian’s books and this was quite a departure from those. I’m not a big fan of the paranormal / horror genre, but this certainly captured me, held my attention and kept me off balance.

      That’s partly due to the author’s use of two distinct voices for the narration. Chip’s point of view is told in second person – a difficult voice to pull off – while his wife and daughters’ points of view are written in third person narrative style. One advantage of this device, of course, is that it makes it easy to tell when a point of view changes. But it is still somewhat off-putting.

      I had a few problems with the story arc, as well – in particular the ending / epilogue. Emily seemed not to notice the creepiness of her new neighbors, and ignored several warning signs. When she finally woke up to the real danger to her family, it was almost too late. Then there’s the issue of what’s behind that bolted shut basement door and how it affects Chip’s mental status. Apparently it’s not at all connected to the coven of witches (a/k/a herablists), other than their “encouraging” his mental deterioration with whatever they are feeding him in all those baked goods. Tension builds to a dramatic confrontation that really had me on the edge of my seat. And then we come to the epilogue … totally took me in a direction I did not see coming.

      As the novel progressed, I could not help but draw comparisons to Stephen King’s The Shining. There are distinct differences in the two works, but it does make me wonder if Bohjalian was inspired by King’s novel.

      Alison Fraser and Mark Bramhall did a fine job narrating the audio version. They have good pacing and Fraser uses a number of different voices for the various characters. Bramhall’s voice is appropriately “creepy” as he performs Chip’s point of view; I really got the sense of Chip’s slow deterioration into depression, paranoia and mental distress.

      All in all, a satisfying Halloween read.
    • 3/5
      Initially I found the book compelling, and the description of the plane crash was unnervingly realistic. The "coven" angle, if that's what it was (it's been a few months since I read the book) didn't interest me; and the ending was really disappointing. I've liked the author's other books that I've read and will continue to read him; this just didn't turn out to be what I expected - and maybe that was the point.
    • 1/5
      What a horrible horrible book! I couldn't believe this was the same author that wrote Skeletons at the feast which was sick a good book. I had to finish this just to know what happened but man, this was bad. First of all, I hated the varying view points. They were distracting and hard to follow, not to mention pointless at times (like that of the cat). Secondly, the whole plot was just bad. SPOILER: bleeding and killing a child just to stay young? Just didn't make ANY sense to me. And killing off the psychiatrist? I didn't get why that was necessary for the plot to do forward. Ug, not a book I would recommend to ANYONE, which is sad because I loved Skeletons at the Feast.
    • 1/5
      Terrible!! The book jacket description does not even match the story. I could do without the wife being turned on by the "witch" sticking her tongue down her throat! I think all the characters in this story have lost it!! If you want a good gothic haunted novel try The Little Stranger of The Thirteenth Tale. My recommendation is stay away from this one!!
    • 4/5
      Having just finished THE NIGHT STRANGERS, I'm still turning the story over in my mind. Probably will for a while, just like THE DOUBLE BIND and SECRETS OF EDEN - Bohjalian's previous novels that you won't just read and forget. As they were, STRANGERS is a page-turner, can't put it down, engrossing read. It does have a more gothic, supernatural edge that always grabs me with a contemporary story line to balance it. As the story begins, you learn about a mysterious house that is the focal point of the action. We meet Captain Chip Linton, commercial airline pilot who tried to make a lake landing with horrendous results, devastating him and his career. He and his wife Emily relocate their twin daughters to Vermont to hopefully make a fresh start. Will their new home be a haven or a house of horrors ?
    • 5/5
      I’ve read quite a few books by Chris Bohjalian, and one of my favorites of his is The Double Bind. I haven’t read anything until this point that compared to that book as to how it evoked feeling within me. I was curious as to this book, The Night Strangers, when I read the synopsis because I do enjoy a good ghost story. When you throw in the aspect of psychological trauma and mental thriller, well, I wonder if Chris Bohjalian tailor-made this book for me? I began reading this book right around Halloween and that made it even better for me in that the skies around my house were turning gray and the wind was blowing and the day I finished this book it was a dark and spooky night that was pouring rain. It was one of those nights that gives you the shivers by its very nature and it added to the drama of this book. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk about the plot for a minute.The public fascination with a pilot’s heroic landing in the Hudson is at the forefront of every pilot’s mind. Some pilots have looked at “Sully’s” real life landing as the fantasy job–the chance to show off amazing skill, save the passengers and fly the best planes while gaining fame for being the best at his job. Chris Linton is one of those pilots. He’s fantasized and read about everything Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger did since he heard about the landing. What Chris doesn’t realize is that he is about to have his chance to pull a Sully.The beginning of the novel takes us into the cockpit of a plane heading for disaster. Chris and his co-pilot Amy are flying a routine flight when they hit a flock of geese who are sucked into their engines, causing a stall-out and forcing Chris to make the decision to land in the local lake. When Chris makes a solid landing, a ferry sends a wave over the plane and capsizes it breaking it into pieces. Thirty-nine passengers die, including his co-pilot, and Chris is deeply traumatized. This trauma seeps into his homelife with his wife, Emily, and twin daughters, Hallie and Garnet. Emily makes the decision to leave her law-firm and move the family to the sleepy little town of Bethel, far from the paparazzi, so Chris can find himself again and the family can have some peace. What Emily doesn’t know is that the town of Bethel has secrets of its own.Emily is immediately confronted by a couple of the townspeople who attempt to warn her about the “herbalists” that she spends her time with and the house that she and her family bought. They say little, though, and seem fearful to give her details. Eventually, these interactions will come back to haunt Emily as her family becomes more and more drawn into what is happening in the town greenhouses and a story of a murder that took place in her own home. Will Emily be able to save her family and keep Chris from falling into the madness that threatens to consume him?The book was full of twists, paranormal turns and small truths. There were times that events in the book were incredibly plausible yet so far-fetched that it made me question the line between sanity and insanity and reality and fiction. Could it happen? Yes. Could it be true? Maybe. The ending was shocking to me, to say the least, and never did I feel like I knew with absolute certainty what was happening at any point. I did feel a couple of events were predictable, but only because Chris Bohjalian is a master at putting out the fishing line and then reeling me in.If you like a thriller with a little bit of psychological mischief and little bit of shivering your timbers, grab this book. If you want a book that is entertaining and yet you might need to take a break from it at night, grab this book. If you want a book that is worth the money you spent on it because it will entertain you over the long haul, grab this book. By far, his best work to date.Note: I got this book for free in order to review it. Thank you for allowing me to share my opinions with others.
    • 5/5
      A Wow. This book blew me away. I could not put it down - I read it in two days and it totally affected my mood. An airplane pilot lands his plane on a later after geese take over the engine - but it is not successful like Captain Sully. 39 people die, and Chip is obsessed with this. He is a shell of himself. His proactive wife decides they need a new start and they move to a very unusual house in a very unusual community to start over. Witches, a door with 39 locks, herbalists who all call themselves the names of flowers or plants. Resistance is futile, and the disintegration of Chip and other characters is sad. Powerful. Impossible to put down. I loved it.
    • 2/5
      I had high hopes for this book. However, I was very disappointed. Was there a character in this book that you could truly like except the children? I felt like I was reading a mash of other books/stories already written. I am sooo glad it was a library book and I hadn't forked over $25.00 for it. This author has written other very good books and I plan to try again, but perhaps at the library.
    • 5/5
      Please excuse me while I pick up my jaw that dropped to the floor. Ok, now I can begin. Where do I begin? Well, this book isn't the typical ghost/horror book, it starts off slow, but pulls you in to the lives of Chip and Emily Linton, their twins Hallie and Garnet; and those "herbalists" of Bethel, New Hampshire that welcome the Linton family with open arms (or are they?). First off, I'd recommend NOT reading this book while traveling on a plane. I do recommend this book to Chris Bohjalian fans, and they will not be disappointed. As always, Bohjalian drops a bombshell of a plot twist at the end, which is why my jaw dropped to the floor. This book has everything: endearing characters, suspense, ghostly thrills, and just a well-written story to keep you up at night. Highly recommend this one!
    • 5/5
      Description: A flock of geese have flown into the engines, and pilot Chip Linton's plane is going to crash, so he has no choice but to make an emergency landing on Lake Champlain, (much like the one on the Hudson). Unfortunately the resulting flip leads to the death of thirty-nine passengers. Although the crash was a freak accident, Chip feels completely responsible and constantly dwells on "what-if's". Grief-stricken, Chip and his wife Emily decide to rebuild their lives and move their family into an old Victorian in New Hampshire; against the wishes of their twins Hallie and Garnet, who have strange feelings about their new home. The new house has a door sealed with thirty-nine six inch carriage-bolts, and that's not the only strange feature. There are ghosts in the house, and they want something from the Lintons. Chip feels like he's losing his mind, while Emily and the twins find themselves surrounded by strange neighbors, (herbalists), who seem to have an unsettling fascination with their blood. Is the house to blame? Or is there something even more sinister at play? Review: Have you ever been so obsessed with a book that you forgot to eat or sleep? Well, that's how I felt while reading The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian. Once I started reading I couldn't put it down, which I didn't expect from what I originally thought was "just a ghost story". It didn't have the typical haunted house/unfinished ghost business story-line, instead it was very unique and extremely creepy. The way the characters were set up was great; each of them, even the dead, had their own back-story and presence. Every time I read from Chip's perspective I felt like I was him, especially when he was on the edge of sanity, (this made the book feel a lot more real, not to mention particularly unnerving). The way that the separate plots came together in the end really threw me for a loop, and I didn't expect the ending, (or anything else about the novel's contents). This would make a great movie plot, with lots of twists and turns to keep viewers glued to the screen. Overall, I was blown away by Chris Bohjalian's writing style and attention to detail. Rarely does a horror novel come around that actually gives me chills and leaves me frighteningly aware of every creaking floorboard. I recommend to anyone looking for a haunting horror novel just in time for Halloween.Rating: On the Run (4.5/5)*** I received this book from Crown Publishing in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.
    • 4/5
      I'm totally exhausted from reading this incredibly horrific novel. I love horror novels and this one certainly kept me reading way past my bedtime. Wow! It's best if you come to Mr. Bohjalian's novel without knowing anything about it. Try not to read the dust jacket. Just enjoy this crazy trip through Horror Land.
    • 4/5
      Review was originally posted on LuxuryReading.com:The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian is an effectively complex novel that mixes psychology and the supernatural to create an original, atmospheric thriller that keeps the reader guessing.As the novel opens, Chip Linton faces the difficult situation of safely landing a passenger jet in a lake after the engines are destroyed by a flock of geese. His attempt fails and thirty-nine passengers die, as the plane is ripped apart. Chip is cleared of any fault, but is left with severe guilt and PTSD. In order to begin healing from the ordeal, Chip, his wife, Emily, and their twin girls, Hallie and Garnet, move from their formerly comfortable lives in the city to a smaller, out of the way town. As the Lintons attempt to settle into their new lives they are surrounded by mystery and conspiracy. Their new home may be haunted and the residents that have welcomed them may have deeper, stranger motivations behind their welcoming nature.The Lintons are welcomed into the town by a group of women who believe in the magical and healing properties of plant life. The women, who are all named after different plants, begin to take interest in the Lintons and try to acclimate the family into their close-knit group.As the intentions of the herbalists to incorporate Emily, Hallie, and Garnet into their cult become more and more persistent, Chip’s PTSD becomes a bigger problem. The subsequent drama provides the reader with page after page of hair-raising paranoia, supernaturally creepy visions, and murderous deception.Chris Bohjalian employs a blend of narration perspectives throughout the novel to add to its creep-out factor. While the majority of the thriller is told in a third person omniscient perspective, Chip’s narration is portrayed through a second person perspective. This change in perspective allows the reader to experience, first hand, the disturbed mentality that Chip progressively succumbs to during his family’s encounters with the unusual and deceptive herbalists.With Bohjalian’s unique writing style and his ability to twist the plot into a unique and sufficiently creepy thriller, The Night Strangers is best read with a light on.
    • 4/5
      I've been reading Bohjalian's books for years now, and they are always well worth the time to curl up and enjoy them. But with this new one, for the first time ever, he managed to kind of creep me out. This one is about a plane crash, which broke the spirit of the surviving captain, and a coven of witches with a need for twins. The captain has twin 10 year old daughters. There's a bit of Stephen King's "Shining" influencing the plot as well. Mix all of that in a cauldron with a bunch of the "herbs" that are being grown in the towns plethora of greenhouses and you get one heck of a story, right down to the unexpected ending (or at least I thought so). Bohjalian has a great talent for bringing small New England towns alive, even when they are filled with the dead. This is a great read.
    • 4/5
      Reader received a free copy of this book from a giveaway from Good Reads First Reads! The Night Strangers is scheduled to be published in October 2011. That is a terrific time for the publication as this is a "stay up all night with the flashlight under the covers" book! I found the book to be incredibly spooky. The book is based loosely on the life of the pilot that crash landed his plane in a water landing. Unfortunately for Chip Linton, the main character in this book, his crash landing was not so fortunate. He is subsequently haunted by some of the passengers who died in this craft. The book has many nice parrallels. From 39 bolts on the door of the house that the Linton's buy, to 39 inches in the hall, the pieces tie together nicely. The book is marketed as a ghost story, but it is more than that. Some old mysteries tie into the plot line and the Linton's twins are subjects within this story. I loved the overall story and how it wove together. There were some very nice plot twists throughout and the reader was kept guessing until the very end. I would recommend this book for anyone looking for a new spooky story around Halloween (or anytime they feel like a good ghost story!
    • 2/5
      Thought it would be creepier and more of a ghost story. Chip, a pilot whose plane crashed in a lake after hitting a flock of birds moves his family to start a new life in New Hampshire. In the basement of their new house is a door sealed with 39 carriage bolts, and Chip is drawn to figure out what lies beyond the door. It's part ghost story and part sort of witch story, as there are paranormal beings as well as a group of locals who create potions and seem to have struck upon one that is similar to the fountain of youth.
    • 1/5
      Hmm...not very original. And WHY if you experience a traumatic event would you leave your hometown and move CLOSER to said traumatic event? This might have been slightly more "believable" if the Lintons had moved to California or Kansas, not New Hampshire...to a town less than two hours from the plane crash.
    • 4/5
      Despite a heavy work schedule for the past couple of months, I was able to read this novel in short bursts, whenever I had the time. Fortunately, Bohjalian has crafted a tight, supernatural thriller that will have readers craving more. After a freak plane accident ripped directly from recent headlines, pilot Chip Linton is struggling with the death of 39 of his passengers. The family moves to a small New Hampshire town to escape the attention of the media, and to try to resume a normal life. The sleepy town, however, holds a dark past that slowly reveals itself to the newest residents. Like some of the great Stephen King novels, and more recently the work of Michael Koryta, this novel contains enough building suspense and supernatural elements to satisfy thrill seekers while providing strong human characters for all readers to get invested in.