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The Empty Lot Next Door by Arthur Mills

Based on a true haunting in Austin, Texas

The Empty Lot Next Door

More than a Ghost Story

Whether or not you believe in ghosts, the true-life experience of Arthur Mills deserves consideration. Find out who Candle Face was, her taunting behavior, and how she turned a boy’s childhood into a living nightmare in The Empty Lot Next Door.

The Empty Lot Next Door - Paperback Edition
The Empty Lot Next Door - eBook Edition
The Empty Lot Next Door by Arthur Mills
The Empty Lot Next Door by Arthur Mills

Do you like true-life ghost stories? If so, the award-winning memoir, The Empty Lot Next Door will awaken your innermost nightmare and scare you senseless!

Whether or not you believe in ghosts, the true-life experience of Arthur Mills deserves consideration. Find out who Candle Face was, her taunting behavior, and how she turned a boy’s childhood into a living nightmare in The Empty Lot Next Door.

Read The Empty Lot Next Door if you...

  • like true ghost stories and believe in haunted houses

  • fear the paranormal and scare easily

  • are afraid of the dark and sleep with the lights on

  • like illustrated books (50 lifelike sketches)

  • want to test the limits of your fear

 

The Empty Lot Next Door storyline

 

In an Austin neighborhood, Ray (Arthur’s childhood name) and his family excitedly moved into a small house in the midst of a big, green lawn. Beside their house is a strange, vacant lot where a house once stood, and a huge hole in the back lies mysteriously. As a young boy with many new friends, Ray considers the empty lot an exciting playground. But the tale behind the lot keeps the boy intrigued and frightened as he learns that the house that was once there was burned down years ago, leaving a girl dead amid the fire. As the neighborhood kids say, the little girl will haunt anyone who dares to jump into the hole. Determined to validate the authenticity of this tale, Ray daringly and mistakenly challenges the ghost, a challenge that he will forever regret. Soon, he becomes haunted by the little girl, whom he named Candle Face, due to her charred face and body. The apparition began visiting his dreams and leaving handprints and other signs around the house, even when Ray was awake.

The Empty Lot Next Door is more than a ghost story. It’s also a story of the desperation, pain, and helplessness experienced by children whose parents work long hours away from home, necessarily leaving them to fend for themselves against real and imagined evils. It's about sibling abuse and the scars that such abuse leaves on the victims and the abusers. The Empty Lot Next Door is also a story of an intense struggle of a child to make sense of the world without communicating his fears and thoughts to the adults in his life since he doesn't want to add to the family's problems.

 

Woven with a mind-boggling plot and hair-raising play of words, The Empty Lot Next Door follows Ray in confronting the past to move on to the future. The award-winning memoir, with a dash of fiction, will never fail to hook readers with every turn of the page.

 

What the critics are saying

Critics agree that The Empty Lot Next Door is a ghost story at its finest, perhaps all the more so because it’s a true story. Professional book critic Lisa McCurley says, “After the first night of sleeping with the light on, I ended up taking off two afternoons from work to finish it which is all it took because I couldn’t put this book down.” Kirkus Reviews agrees, “In a coming-of-age story that’s well paced and layered with emotion, Mills creates moments of true suspense through guileless prose as he unearths a family tragedy.” Anyone who enjoys being scared or wants to investigate whether ghosts are real will add The Empty Lot Next Door to the must-read list.

 

Award-winning book

When Arthur Mills wrote The Empty Lot Next Door, some neighbors and family quit speaking to him; they didn’t want to acknowledge the local element of his true-life story of ghosts, suicide, and bullying, but that didn’t stop his new book from winning awards.

Reviewers Choice Awards

  • Kids Award for Best Teen / Young Adult Book of the Year

  • Teen (12-16) – First Place

  • Regional South – First Place

  • Parenting, Family, and Relationships – Honorable Mention

 

Get your copy today!

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