Groosham Grange
This one’s a puzzle. It opens with father declaring that Christmas won’t take place this year because he’s annoyed with his son’s school report. He then hits his wife with a spoon, stabs her by accident with the carving knife, reminisces fondly about brutal public school traditions and says that if he’d talked to his father the way his son talked back to him, he’d have been forced to drink a gallon of petrol… It's so wildly over-the-top it’s wonderful. But then the son gets sent to Groosham Grange, discovers strange things happening, meets gruesome teachers and watches the boy and girl who arrived with him gradually fall under the evil influence the school holds over all its pupils. The brave boy hero he is, he escapes. But… … and this really surprised me, everything I expected to happen at the end doesn’t. I can’t write about it because that would spoil it for others. Not fair. I’ll just say it took me more than by surprise. Here’s the thing, though: reading it, the Protective Adu...
