Overall, this book is recommended only for readers who can handle some fairly scary scenes.

More than just a spooky tale, its also a moral fable about human greed and the power of storytelling. Furthermore, many of the scenes are pretty spooky, with characters encountering the Night Gardener roaming by night and going about his nightmarish business. This much-anticipated follow-up to Jonathan Auxiers exceptional debut, Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes, is a Victorian ghost story with shades of Washington Irving and Henry James. In addition, the Night Gardener doesn’t exactly take kindly to the protagonists’ efforts to fight it: the Night Gardener kills four characters over the course of the book, one crushed by a hurtling door, one struck by a falling branch, and two killed “off-screen.” While these deaths aren’t gory per se, they are definitely a bit disturbing-the character who is hit by the branch dies relatively slowly and bleeds some at the mouth, and the reader does hear the anguished screams of the two characters whose deaths aren’t explicitly described. The Night Gardener follows two abandoned Irish siblings who travel to work as servants at a creepy, crumbling English manor house.

Written in a clearly Gothic style, the action largely revolves around the decidedly spooky Night Gardener-a seemingly-immortal, shadowy “gardener” who roams the mansion by night, caring for the twisted tree that literally grows through the house and collecting the essence of the nightmares of the house’s sleeping inhabitants. But the house and its inhabitant are not quite what they seem. THE NIGHT GARDENER By Auxier, Jonathan ( Author ) Hardcover May-20-2014 Language English Publisher Amulet Books Publication date Jan. While this book is certainly well-written and interesting to read, it’s not without its scary scenes. The Night Gardener is the haunting tale of two abandoned Irish siblings who travel to work as servants at a creepy, crumbling English manor house.

The night gardener auxier