Everyone likes a good ghost story, and I admit to being rather fond of writers who are able to deliver a good ghost story in an intelligible fashion, and that doesn't look down the nose of the reader. Nina Kiriki Hoffman has been writing short fiction for some time now, and I have read some of her stuff in anthologies, notably the Datlow & Windling annual Year's Best Fantasy and Horror works. In Thread, Kiriki Hoffman shows that she can write with the best of them.
The story is about a fateful meeting between Tom Renfield, a drifter and loner with powers and secrets that even he can't fathom, and Laura Bolte, the beautiful and rebellious daughter of an ancient family with terrible abilities and even worse intentions. Tom and Laura have a destiny, and it is one that has some gruesome, truly horrifying dimensions, but they are ones that the author brings to a sense of conclusion by the time one finishes the book. I couldn't help but want to see a sequel to this book, but I think that I'll have to content myself with the short fiction of the author and her other novels.
Good book, well worth reading. And a good ghost story to boot. What more could one ask?