A Christmas Ghost Story by Kim Newman

I don’t know if this is the perfect complement or counterprogramming to my eldest child and I watching and really enjoying Agatha All Along together. Probably a little of both — tho my kid will likely have little interest in this book, alas.

That might be for the best tho, as it’s A Chilling Tale for Dark Days and Long Nights, and I think my kids consume too much horror content as it is (even if the YouTube stuff they gobble down is hilariously terrible, with absurd special effects and wooden acting.) In this horror novella, a bestselling self-published suspense author and her teenage son live in a fairly remote cottage in the Somerset Levels. Angie is a single mom with a penchant for wordplay and a devotion to Christmas passed down through her family, but in a wry sort of manner. She and her son Rust put up offbeat DIY ornaments, change the words in Christmas carols to turn them into Christmas “cruels”, and engage in inexplicable but harmless rituals, like stuffing their mince pies with too much mince and putting broken biscuits in a long-disused pet bowl for Santa’s reindeer.

In the manner of countless teenage boys of the 21st century, Rust has a podcast. His focus is on local paranormal phenomena. Angie hates the idea but tries to be supportive, tho Rust can’t help but notice that some of her jokes are meaner than others. Still, they’re pretty close for a mother and son, and look forward to engaging in the usual Christmastime customs.

December 1st arrives, and with it a strange Christmas card. Rust thinks it’s just the usual, even if the message — Pinch-punch, first of the month — doesn’t seem terribly holiday-like. Perhaps it’s from one of their forgetful and/or eccentric family members or acquaintances, who’d also neglected to sign their name at the bottom. Perhaps it’s one of his podcasting rivals pulling a prank. Angie, however, seems weirdly stricken, and takes to her bed soon after. The cards, however, keep arriving, each one with a sinister message and a picture on the front that keeps turning into a more ominous version of the last.

Angie eventually confesses to Rust that her seeming overreaction is rooted in the fact that these cards are eerily similar to ones she remembers from a seasonal TV horror show that no one else has ever heard of. The show terrified her as a child, and she has no idea why the cards are being sent to her now. As their Christmas is slowly overshadowed by uncertainty and fear, will they be able to figure out what’s going on, before someone is irreparably harmed?

I’ve always loved how Kim Newman writes in a way that immerses the reader into his strange yet entirely plausible worlds. I’ve adored all of his Anno Dracula books, for example, and found them to be utter page-turners. While A Christmas Ghost Story was similarly immersive, it was not, oddly, as gripping. I think this is largely due to the fact that Angie and Rust live very much in a microcosm of two, with plenty of in-jokes and insider knowledge that feels nigh impenetrable to the outsider, including the reader. While their ordeal is certainly interesting, it also feels highly personalized in a way meant to shut out interlopers. Which, admittedly, does not make for the most captivating reading.

It’s hard to talk about the themes without giving away the plot, but I did both understand where Angie was coming from while having not the greatest amount of sympathy for her. Parenting is hard, and she’s clearly been through a lot of unresolved trauma, and therapy isn’t cheap. I think I might have liked this book more if some of the plot threads hadn’t been left dangling — what happened to Fillip? Where’s Rust’s dad? — but do think that it’s overall a scary, sad and clever tale appropriate (YMMV, ofc) for the upcoming Yuletide season.

A Christmas Ghost Story by Kim Newman was published October 8 2024 by Titan Books and is available from all good booksellers, including