Thursday Trails #8

“Thursday Trails” is a feature dedicated to linking TV, movies, and music as a trail to book recommendations. To read how it works, click here.

This Month’s Topic: Ghosts

Music

“Ghost” by Ingrid Michaelson
Amazon, iTunes

Movie

The Others
Amazon, Netflix

Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman (The Hours, Moulin Rouge!) delivers an utterly unforgettable performance in this chilling and stylish suspense thriller! While awaiting her husband’s return from war, Grace (Kidman) and her two young children live an unusually isolated existence behind the locked doors and drawn curtains of a secluded island mansion. Then, when three mysterious servants arrive it becomes frighteningly clear that there is far more to this house than meets the eye. Acclaimed by critics everywhere, the unpredictable twists and turns of this compelling hit will keep you guessing.

TV

Ghost Whisperer
Amazon, iTunes, Netflix

Ever since she was a young girl, Melinda Gordon (Jennifer Love Hewitt) has been able to see and talk to dead people–earth bound spirits who have yet to cross over to the other side and who seek her help in communicating and resolving unfinished business with the living. Melinda sometimes has a hard time accepting her “gift,” especially now that she’s a newlywed and looking forward to starting her new life with her husband, Jim Clancy (David Conrad), a paramedic. Her friend and business partner in the antique store, Andrea Moreno (Aisha Tyler), is fascinated by Melinda’s talent. Although Melinda embraces her unique “abilities” as a blessing and sometimes a curse, she always helps her clients–alive or dead–find emotional closure.

Novel

The Archived by Victoria Schwab
Goodreads

Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.

Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures that only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.

Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was, a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often-violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.

Being a Keeper isn’t just dangerous—it’s a constant reminder of those Mac has lost. Da’s death was hard enough, but now her little brother is gone too. Mac starts to wonder about the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive, the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece together what remains, the Archive itself might crumble and fall.

In this haunting, richly imagined novel, Victoria Schwab reveals the thin lines between past and present, love and pain, trust and deceit, unbearable loss and hard-won redemption.