When Midnight Comes and Beware of This Shop by Carol Beach York

In When Midnight Comes, Joan's cousin Wilma comes to stay with the Bridgeport family.  Wilma is fat, plain, and will not talk.  Joan and the rest of the family feel very uncomfortable around her.  Soon after Wilma arrives, strange things happen.  The back door is left open one day, and the Bridgeports' cat disappears.  Mrs. Bridgeport develops insomnia, and Emily must sleep with her light on.  The grandfather clock that doesn't work begins ticking during the night.  The entire family is spooked, but Wilma remains unresponsive.  Joan desperately wants Wilma to return to her home.

In Beware of This Shop, Isabel buys a ring in a gift shop, while Hester purchases a small figurine.  Hester notices that the figurine is no longer pretty once she gets home with it, and she feels that the figurine is giving her nightmares.  Hester breaks the figurine and immediately feels better.

Hester visits Isabel to find her deathly ill.  Hester gets the ring away and destroys it, and Isabel recovers quickly.  Unfortunately, the townspeople continue to visit the gift shop, and soon, the store owner manipulates Hester into working for him.  Hester fears for her life, but she cannot figure out how to break the spell.

Both of these books would have fit in well with the Dark Forces and Twilight Where Darkness Begins series, which were both published at around the same time as these two books.  If you enjoy either of those series, then you will most likely enjoy these books.  I greatly enjoyed both of them.

I have sampled a few other books by Carol Beach York, and I did not like them.  This is an author where some books are great and others are not that good.