The Dial-a-Ghost Agency specializes in pairing the ideal ghosts with humans who are seeking specters for their homes. It’s a highly specialized service indeed, but one that has found its niche. Customer satisfaction is high until the day of a momentous mix-up: The pleasant Wilkinson ghosts and the thoroughly nasty Shriekers are accidentally sent to the wrong locations. The convent nuns who are inadvertently saddled with the Shriekers put up with the unpleasantness as best they can, but conniving Fulton Snodde-Brittle is completely disappointed in the mild Wilkinsons. Snodde-Brittle had requested truly evil ghosts in the hope of scaring his nephew Oliver to death, since Oliver is heir to the estate Snodde-Brittle and his wife hope to acquire. But the Wilkinsons are amiable and nurturing to young Oliver. Both humorous and agreeably gory (Sir Pelham Shrieker’s forehead “has been bashed in by a horse’s hoof, so that it was just a mass of splintered bone; his left ear hung by a thread”) this clever ghost story neatly ties up all loose ends by the satisfying conclusion. (Ages 9–12)