The Shadow Guests

Returning to England from Australia after the mysterious disappearance of his mother and older brother, Cosmo looks for peace with Cousin Eunice at the mill house; but there is weekly boarding at a school in Oxford, unfriendly classmates and new knowledge of a family curse to cope with.

This is a more reflective Joan Aiken - the action being confined to Cosmo's encounter with three boys from his family's past - or Roman, one crusader, one eighteenth-century - all inexorably bound by the curse. These ghostly incidents, although pa*** of the build-up a dramatic climax, are isolated and less strong than the evocation of places and people --- the mill hose and its surroundings, Morningquest School (not exactly Grange Hill, but the relationships of the inhabitants are much the same). It is atmosphere rather than story that the reader takes away from this one.