The Ghosts of Stone Hollow By Zilpha Keatley Snyder The people of Taylor Valley would not go near Stone Hollow; many said it was haunted. New arrival Amy discovers for herself the secret of Stone Hollow. ISBN-13: 9780718823474 Specifications: 216x138mm, 208pp, Hardback Price: £9.99 • US$19.98 Publication: July 1978 Order this Title Now

About this Book

Long before she had first seen Taylor Springs, Amy had heard so much about the little town that her mother's childhood there sometimes seemed more real than her own. So, when she and her parents had come to live in the Taylor Valley, and she had started at the school where her mother and her aunt had once been pupils, among families whose names and stories she knew by heart, Amy had confidently expected to feel right at home.

But it hadn't been like that at all. It took Amy a long time to learn how to act and talk like the others. She managed it, though, because she was quick and adaptable, and eventually that unhappy hostile period was pushed to the very back of her mind. It was Jason who revived the memory of it: he was a new boy, odd and foolish and gentle, who wouldn't or couldn't stand up for himself. At first Amy thought he was scared, but when she found that he had been to Stone Hollow, she had to change her mind.

The people of Taylor Valley wouldn't go near Stone Hollow. Some of them said it was haunted by an Italian family who had once lived there briefly and tragically; others that the ghosts were those of men who had brewed illicit whiskey there; others still, that it had once been an Indian shrine. Jason wasn't at all scared by this - on the contrary, he was calm and interested. "Time moves in big loops," he told Amy, "and sometimes the loops are very near each other. And there are places, only a very few places, where there is a power that makes them pull together and touch."

Stone Hollow was a place like that, so Jason said. At first, Amy simply didn't believe him. This story, with its vivid portrayal of her day-to-day life, and its eerie glimpses of the past, shows how she began to wonder if he could possibly be right.

About the Author

Zilpha Keatley Snyder was born in California and has lived there almost all her life. She taught for a number of years, and served as a master teacher for the University of California, before giving up teaching to write books. She is married and has three children, Susana, Douglas and Benton. With her family she lives near Santa Rosa in California, in an old house which has, she is sure, a resident ghost. When one of her other books, The Headless Cupid, was published in Great Britain in 1972, the Birmingham Post wrote: "Few children's writers are blessed with such a marvellous talent for comic invention or for characters so entirely convincing."

Other titles available by Zilpha Keatley Snyder:
The Changeling