Just a quick note to recommend "An Enemy at Green Knowe" by Lucy M Boston, which
I read yesterday after having it on my `to read' pile for about two years.

I think of Bellairs' novels as thoroughly in the vein of MR James' ghost
stories, recast into children's fiction. All the Green Knowe books are fantastic
– the first one, Children of Green Knowe, is a complete jewel, beautiful and
haunting and philosophical, and short – and all of them have something of that
Jamesian idea of the ghostly, the disembodied intelligence, but generally with a
more joyful than threatening atmosphere.

But "Enemy…" is about demons and witches and things that go bump in the night –
I think it's deliberately Jamesian (there's a hideous white hopping thing, just
like in "Casting The Runes") and it definitely gave me a shiver, whilst
obviously being something very individual, a children's novel, and with a happy
ending - for the goodies, that is…

Nick