Homebody
This romantic ghost story relies on a familiar horror backbone: a stranger with a tragic past moves into an old house that  also has a tragic past, and is forced to reckon with the supernatural forces that dwell there. InHomebody, the stranger is an itinerant architect-builder who makes a lonely living by purchasing fixer-uppers, renovating them, and selling them. The house he buys in Greensboro,  North Carolina, (where Orson Scott Card lives, in real life) has three  mysteries attached to it: a tunnel in the basement, an attractive female squatter who refuses to leave, and a trio of weird doomsayers who live next door.Card has a clear, well-honed writing style, full of human warmth--a  style that is especially effective in the development of the central  character, and in details of tools and techniques for renovating an old house. His approach to murder, danger, and threatening forces is so free of closeness or oppression that one might call it &quot;anti-gothic.&quot; In  an interview, he said, &quot;I am completely uninterested in exploring evil. Evil (and weak and wicked) people are all evil (or weak, or  wicked) in the same boring ways. But good people are infinitely interesting in  the ways they manage to be good despite all the awful circumstances of  their lives.&quot;Homebodyis a pleasant tale about the triumph of love over evil, with a couple of bizarre twists to give it spice. (Hint: don't read the Kirkus Review if you want to keep the plot a surprise.)--Fiona Webster--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.