John Backman was a content man with a lovely wife and precious new baby living on Long Island, New York. He may not have LOVED his day job but his lifelong hobby of studying weird and unexplained phenomena gave him the extra excitement he needed. If you had asked John, he would have said that life was good. Then, a sudden, unforeseen tragedy strikes and John's life is turned upside down.

Five years later, John is a rich man from having won millions in the lottery and dotes on his amazing daughter, Jessica. He fights panic attacks every day of his life. He also has a very successful website called fearnone.com, which is devoted to unexplained phenomena. This is now his "job" since he has the financial freedom to do as he pleases. His site gets thousands of hits daily and he receives a considerable amount of emails from people about their personal experiences.

One day, he gets an email from a man living in the tiny, off the grid town of Shida, Alaska. This man has had one of the most terrifying and unexplained experiences in his life and he wants to know why. John's intrigued with this email so he gets in touch with the man, Judas, with more questions.

It seems that there's a house in Shida, Alaska that, for all its beauty and expense, is a "bad" house. The last family that lived there simply vanished without a trace, leaving all of their belongings, including their car, behind. No one knows what happened to them.

This is more than enough to pique John's interest even more. He wants to go there and investigate for himself, but he won't be going alone. Jessica is thrilled to be having an adventure of this sort as is John's sister-in-law, Eve, who is at loose ends herself. It has been Eve who has taken care of the family for the last five years and is an indispensable part of them. She has a baby, Liam, who will also be going along.

Once they arrive, the house is certainly as beautiful as promised. In fact, they couldn't have asked for a more perfect setting for their vacation. However, the townspeople are all Native American and have a genuine dislike of white people. So John and his little family rarely venture into the town itself because of the way they're treated. Judas, the man that contacted John, is also white and considered a bit of an outcast although he's been living there most of his life.

It doesn't take long for things to start happening in the house and, at first, John's pretty excited. He's going to actually be able to document unexplained phenomena. His excitement starts to cool a bit, though, when Jessica reports seeing a ghostly boy and people start to die.

FOREST OF SHADOWS is a first novel of horror short story writer, Hunter Shea. This book grabs you from the first page and holds you relentlessly until the final sentence. With just the right amount of spookiness, it builds into a crescendo of horror that you might never have seen coming. It's the perfect Halloween book to enjoy any time of the year.