The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James

The Haunting of Maddy Clare is Simone St. James' first novel; it's a ghost story set in 1920's England. It was a page turner and hard to put down, and it was suspenseful and scary, and there was a ghost, a mystery, and a romance, and I loved it, and no library in Lebanon County has An Inquiry Into Love And Death, St. James' follow up to her debut! So now I'll have to see if I get it from outside the county. Her third novel will drop in April 2014. The Haunting of Maddy Clare is a historical/period drama combined with a ghost story mystery (which basically means, it's right up my alley because ENGLISH PERIOD DRAMA and GHOST STORY) populated by characters each in their own way equally damaged and scarred by tragedy.

1922. Rural England. London city girl, Sarah Piper, comes to the English countryside in the employ of the young, handsome and charming Alistaire Gellis. Gellis, a veteran of World War I, has parlayed a lifelong fascination with ghosts into eeking out a living as a ghost hunter. He travels England documenting legitimate paranormal manifestations and debunking other supposedly paranormal incidents. Gellis separates the legitimate paranormal occurrences from those that have no supernatural cause or origins with his trusted assistant, Matthew Ryder, a man left even more scarred both emotionally and physically by his World War I service than Gellis.

Gellis hires on Sarah for the specific case of the ghost of Maddy Clare, a young woman of unknown and tragic origins, who hanged herself in the barn of her kindly employers, the Clares. Maddy kept to herself in life, never left the Clares' property, and was terrified of men. Thus, Gellis' need of a woman to communicate with Maddy's ghost who becomes violently agitated and aggressive in any male presence. Gellis and Sarah arrive in Waringstoke, a small village in the countryside and find themselves none too welcome by the insular villagers who take none too kindly to outsiders, especially outsiders written off as charlatans. Gellis begins his interviews of Mrs. Clare and her housekeeper, Mrs. Macready, the two women who knew Maddy best and who are now terrorized by the girl's ghost.

In the wake of several bloodcurdling, terrifying encounters with the ghost, Sarah, joined by Gellis' assistant Ryder, begins to realize that there's more to this story than the suicide of a damaged servant girl. Sarah is certain that just as Maddy's death is rooted in what happened to her the night she showed up on the Clares' doorstep, so is Maddy's haunting. So Sarah and Ryder begin digging, led by clues given by Maddy's ghost and spurred by the ultimatum from the bitter, angry ghost: find her story, find the men who attacked her, bring her justice or lose Gellis to the ghost of Maddy forever.

Putting the pieces of Maddy's story together is hampered by villagers both hostile and unwilling to share the truth of what happened to Maddy. When men possibly connected to Maddy's attack in the woods and subsequently her death start disappearing, it's clear Gellis' fate isn't the only one in danger. Maddy's ghost has become an extremely embittered and rage driven version of the girl as she was in life, hellbent on exacting revenge that is tied directly to the girl's death.

If you're a fan of historical or period pieces, of ghost stories or of mysteries--or all three, I highly recommend you check out this book.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

How To Be A Heroine: Or What I've Learned From Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis

I feel as if I could write a book subtitled "What I've Learned From Reading Too Much" except all my lessons would be culled from Greek mythology, the Babysitters' Club, the lives of British queens, crime mysteries, suspense thrillers and celebrity and entertainment gossip. I first ran across How To Be A Heroine by Samantha Ellis in an ad in BookPage. The title sounded intriguing and once I looked it up on Amazon, I was in for reading it. It reminds me of the literacy autobiography writing assignment that I had in one of my English composition classes in college--except this is the literacy autobiography on steroids. The premise of this book is that the author revisits the seminal texts that she read in her youth by examining the lessons and impressions of the novels that she had upon her first readings when she was younger. Ellis has then re-read the novels as an adult specifically for the writing of her own book to see if the novels hold up to her original i

Heat Lightning by John Sandford

I'd previously read John Sandford's first Virgil Flowers novel, Dark of the Moon , a few years back and found it to be a quick, well written read. Recently I discovered he has since written three more Flowers titles and decided to start with the second title and read through to the fourth and most recent one. Heat Lightning is the second Flowers installment. The darkness of the crimes committed that must be solved in the novel are leavened by the lighter presentation of Flowers and the story. It works well together--a dark crime doesn't always need dark prose to back it up. Virgil Flowers is Lucas Davenport's go to man in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension when there's a sensitive, tough or otherwise puzzling case to solve. Flowers has a high clearance rate and can often turn around a case in about a week. This particular case is especially perplexing with quite a few red herrings thrown into the mix to throw everyone--Flowers and the reader in

The Whisperers by John Connolly

If there was one thing Jimmy didn't care for, it was competition, ... There were some exceptions to that rule: he was rumored to have a sweet deal with the Mexicans, but he wasn't about to try to reason with the Dominicans, or the Columbians, or the bikers, or even the Mohawks. If they wanted to avail themselves of his services, as they sometimes did, that was fine, but if Jimmy Jewel started questioning their right to move product he and Earle would end up tied to chairs in the [bar] with pieces of themselves scattered by their feet, assuming their feet weren't among the scattered pieces, while the bar burned down around their ears, assuming they still had ears. from page 86 The Whisperers is John Connolly's newest Charlie Parker installment in which some beloved characters reappear and in which previous characters from another Parker installment reappear to shed further light on the big baddie that may or may not be coming for Parker in the future. This newest inst

A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

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