Deep and Dark and Dangerous [Paperback]

A family secret is at the root of Mary Downing Hahn's story of supernatural events in Maine. Ali, 13, is eager to spend her vacation with Aunt Dulcie, helping to care for her little niece, Emma, in the lake house where Dulcie and Claire, Ali's mother, spent summers. Claire, who is phobic about water, is dead set against her going but is forced to agree. The vacation by the lake turns unpleasant when Ali and Emma meet a mean, spiteful kid named Sissy. Emma idolizes and imitates Sissy, becoming bratty and hostile and accepting Sissy's dangerous dares.

Sissy keeps talking about Teresa, a girl who drowned under mysterious circumstances when Claire and Dulcie were kids. At first Ali thinks Sissy is just trying to scare her with a ghost story, but soon she discovers the real reason why Sissy is so angry: she is the ghost of Teresa and blames Claire and Dulcie for her death.




 

Mary Downing Hahn is at her chilling best in this supernatural tale. The long-buried secret of a young girl's death in a canoe accident relentlessly makes its way to the surface when a mysterious girl sabotages Ali's idyllic vacation in Maine.




 

"Signature spooky Hahn sends appropriate shivers up the reader's spine. . . satisfyingly chilly."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Hahn offers another eerie, suspenseful ghost story filled with family secrets."
—Booklist

"Classic mystery elements . . . add to the suspense and keep the well-plotted story moving along to a satisfying conclusion."
—School Library Journal

"A compact and approachable shiveriness . . . an easygoing vacation read."
—Bulletin