Jonathan Stroud's five-book Lockwood & Co. series of young adult fantasy novels are great fun. In an alternate-world London full of malign ghosts eponymous Anthony Lockwood is the dashing-angsty Sherlock-Holmesian leader of a tiny ghostbuster-detective agency; George Cubbins is the brilliant intellectual-nerdy paranormal researcher; and Lucy Carlyle is the protagonist, a psychically talented self-critical young teen who tells the tales. Setting aside predictable plots, the characters are engaging and the humor is delightful. Most wonderful are poetic descriptions of otherworldly landscapes. From Book 5 ("The Empty Grave"), for example, in Chapter 6, visiting a cemetery:

... I let him lead the way, keeping my head low to avoid the thorns arching above. The track wound among the gravestones and soon opened out into a small cleared space where the foliage had been crushed underfoot and the ivy chopped back with a sword.

Two headstones stood in the center of the space. One of the last rays of sunlight was shining on them. They were made of gray stone: modern, sharp-edged, and unsullied by wind or rain. Neither was ornate, but the one on the left was larger. It was crowned by a carving of a beautiful, sad-faced woman in a hooded cape. On the plinth below, in strong clear letters, was written:

CELIA LOCKWOOD DONALD LOCKWOOD KNOWLEDGE SETS US FREE

The second stone was jut a simple slab, inscribed with only two words:

JESSICA LOCKWOOD

I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. My heart was too full, my head awhirl. I gazed at the stones. ...

It's the final resting place of young Anthony Lockwood's parents and his sister. A little later, in Chapter 8:

... In the late afternoon, with the shadows lengthening, it didn't radiate prosperity. The Palace Theater itself was a hulking construction, standing alone on the edge of a stretch of waste ground. At one time it must have been impressive; it had a columned front, reminiscent of a Roman temple, with carved figures above the pillars depicting tragic and comic scenes. But the concrete in the columns was cracked and broken, and half the carvings were gone. The main doors were boarded up. Entry to the building appeared to be from the field alongside, where many tents of faded colors had been erected, their canvas snapping in the wind. A makeshift iron fence, in which snack food wrappers fluttered like trapped insects, surrounded the compound. A siren played a cheesy melody; this was the cue for the closure of the fair. The last few sad-faced customers, bearing draggled sticks of cotton candy, were shuffling homeward through the rusty gates. ...

And in Chapter 21, in a ghostly parallel London:

... We walked on. The air was bitter—a dry, dead absence that sucked the life from your lungs and the motion from your blood. It clung to the surface of our cloaks, coating them with ice that creaked and cracked gently as we moved. But it could not penetrate. We existed in fragile bubbles of warmth that sustained us as we hurried on. Even so, the silence bore into our skulls, and the countless watchful windows on every side filled us with a slowly mounting fear.

There were no ghost-lamps in that city. No railings, no cars—nothing of iron—and no running water. The drains and gutters were empty, the runnels dry. Street nameplates were gone, and the signs above the storefronts carried no legible words. The route we took was familiar to us, but the overarching stillness made it alien. During my previous visit to the Other Side, I'd been in the open countryside. Here, in central London, the utter silence had even more of a transformative effect. It turned the rows of houses into cliff faces, the streets into a dark labyrinth of canyons and ravines.

...

... For every street that was empty, there was another with something wandering in the mists. Dark shapes stood at the upstairs windows of hollow houses, staring up toward the sky. Tiny figures sat in frozen sandboxes at the edge of city parks. Lines of adults waited on sidewalks, perhaps queuing for buses that would never come. Men in suits and ties meandered past each other; women walked with hands out, pushing nonexistent strollers. All were silent, gray, and drifting—the colors of their clothes faded, their faces bleached as white as bone. Lost souls, the skull had called them, and I knew that it was right. They were lost, mindlessly repeating actions that no longer had a meaning. ...

(cf Pickwick Papers Ghost Removal (2006-06-11,) ...^z - 2023-04-15