Changes

When the Goodman children are packed off by their mother to stay with their archaeologist father while she goes on holiday with her new boyfriend, they have mixed feelings. They don't want their mother to go away because they definitely don't like Roger. However, they do look forward to spending time with their father, Philip, a man more wedded to his work and his latest book than he ever was to his wife and family. Philip has bought a crumbling old pub in the middle of the English countryside and is in the middle of investigating its history. Like many villages in England with Temple in the name, Temple Marton has an ancient connection with the mysterious order of Templar Knights, disbanded over five hundred years ago. The pub that Philip has bought is thought not only to be haunted, but also to have some connection with this Templar history. This connection isn't just the stuff of gossiping legend, as the Goodman children are about to find out...

I like Celia Rees. She writes a straightforward book with plenty of action and enough plotting interest to hold the attention of the reluctant reader middle teen, but eschews complicated imagery and metaphor, making her books suitable also for confident readers of about nine and up. In ''Ghost Chamber'', she makes doubly sure of this by telling the story from several points of view - we get inside the skin of Sally, the earnest oldest sister, who is sixteen and of Hugh, the middle brother, a thirteen-year-old desperate for drama and gore and ghosts. We also see events through the eyes of Edna, an old and superstitious woman from the village, through the eyes of secular Philip, dismissive of the supernatural and through the eyes of Mark Garvin, henchman to Holt, the book's villain. These varying points of view give ''Ghost Chamber'' an appeal to both young and old and girl and boy.