Housekeeping

It's fun to believe the Woodbridge is haunted. The charming and colorful 19th-century hotel collects dust and tourists along the Texas side of the Rio Grande, a holdover from a time before rails and fences. The shifting stories of its ghostly past keeps the guests at the bar and boredom at bay, but the hotel's bartender knows better - or does he?

What starts as battle with a malevolent odor leads to an unraveling mystery of desperate lives, forgotten corridors, colonial curses, ghastly cleaning ladies, and black brujeria in this novella-length homage to 19th-Century Gothic horror. A perfect read for Dia de los Muertos.