Vacations from Hell
Grade 9 Up&mdash;The all-star lineup of authors of these supernatural tales will attract readers, but none of the selections truly surprise. The settings range from the French countryside to a Jamaican villa and the protagonists include a vampire, a witch, and a couple of normal girls whose vacations turn into nightmares. The most winning entry is Maureen Johnston's "The Law of Suspects," in which two sisters are exposed to a story that turns its listeners into killers. It succeeds more as a black comedy of errors than as a chilling horror story. Bray's "Nowhere is Safe" is refreshing because the narrator is male and the characters don't fit the blond-haired, blue-eyed mold. But the author makes such a to-do about her characters' Haitian, Japanese, and Jewish identities that it feels sort of like an after-school special, and the Slavic village's sacrifice ritual is neither funny nor particularly scary. Overall, this is a good beach read for some, but the collection won't attract a diverse audience.&mdash;Emily R. Brown, Providence Public Library, RICopyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.