Joe Hill, "Heart-Shaped Box"

A ghost story: the ghost comes in the heart-shaped box, along with a suit, via an internet auction site that is Not EBay. We are not told what it is. I think that selling ghosts on the internet may not be as novel as the author thinks it is, but let that pass. The story of a faux-gothy rock star hoist with his own petard is quite interesting, and so is the plausible psychological background to the whole thing, but I felt that the story did lose focus when it went away from the heart-shaped box.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/6846241

Daphne du Maurier, "The House on the Strand"

A proper old-fashioned time-travel book, sub-genre voluntary but limited, of the sort that I used to love, with a very du Maurier unreliable narrator. The local history was evidently researched very thoroughly, but the book wore its learning lightly. I found myself captivated not so much by the fourteenth century parts, as the narrator was, but by his obsession with the past and the way it slowly destroyed his marriage, his health, and perhaps his sanity. Wonderfully chilling last line.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/7625667