Look for Me by Moonlight

A lonely teenage girl, an isolated inn by the ocean, a ghost, a mysterious stranger-sure, these are gothic cliches, but in Hahn's (Stepping on the Cracks) able hands, they add up to a stylish supernatural thriller. Cynda, the 16-year-old narrator, has trepidations about moving in with her estranged father and his much younger wife at the Maine inn that they run even before she hears that the inn is haunted, ostensibly by the ghost of a young woman murdered some 60 years ago. Soon after her arrival, handsome, sophisticated Victor Morthanos checks in for a month-long stay. Cynda's five-year-old half-brother, Todd, hates him on sight, but Cynda just as quickly falls in love: Victor alone understands her jealousy and resentment of Todd and her stepmother, and he alone truly appreciates her. By the time Cynda figures out that Victor is a vampire and the murderer of the ghostly girl, she is well on the way to becoming a ghost herself, as is Todd. How Cynda overcomes her thralldom makes for a deliciously spine-tingling story-all the more gripping for its sturdy psychological underpinnings. Ages 11-up. (Apr.)