WHOEVER SAID THAT GHOSTS EXIST MUST BE OUT OF THEIR MIND.Oh, wait. That was me. I said that. If you'd told me yesterday that ghosts were real I would have smiled, nodded, and called a shrink to fix your deluded little mind. Now it's my turn to question my sanity when the ghost of my best friend turns up in my apartment. Was it the tequila shots the night before causing this apparition? Or one too many bumps to the head - let's face it, clumsy is my middle name, it really wouldn't surprise me if I'd done some irreparable damage to my grey matter over the years.Now I have to accept that the paranormal does, in fact, exist. But sadly, my ghost friend is lacking something besides his body. His memory. He doesn't know how he died but suspects foul play and he wants my help to find his killer. I can't refuse, I'm a sucker for a good mystery and the chance to bring my friends killer to justice is too good to pass up.Surprises abound as I discover a secret talent for sleuthing, not to mention an unexpected inheritance of a talking cat among other things. But the biggest problem of all? Captain Cowboy Hot Pants, or as he likes to be called, Detective Kade Galloway of the Firefly Bay PD. He's one smokin' cop, but my distrust of the police runs deep and despite his assurances that he's here to help can I really trust him, or is his offer of assistance designed to keep me from discovering the truth?I guess I'll find out when death comes knocking on my door.Join Audrey Fitzgerald in the Ghost Detective series, a paranormal cozy mystery featuring a cat, a ghost, and a murder to solve.
My name is Everly Dupree and when my marriage fell apart, I did what every normal, red-blooded woman does… I moved back to my hometown and bought a haunted house for the back taxes. Okay, I realize I might have been a bit hasty, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Then again, so did staying at the Bide A Way Motel until a dead body turned up in the next room. All I wanted was to come home, find a job and start a new life. I didn't plan on getting tied up in the afterlife. Or of solving a murder, but here's what I learned: You might not believe in ghosts, but sometimes they believe in you.
A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice A comprehensive, authoritative and readable history of the evolution of the ghost in the west, examining the behavior of the subject in its preferred environment: the stories we tell each other. "Roger Clarke tells this [the story that inspired Henry James' The Turn of the Screw] and many other gloriously weird stories with real verve, and also a kind of narrative authority that tends to constrain the skeptical voice within... [An] erudite and richly entertaining book." —New York Times Book Review No matter how rationally we order our lives, few of us are completely immune to the suggestion of the uncanny and the fear of the dark. What explains sightings of ghosts? Why do they fascinate us? What exactly do those who have been haunted see? What did they believe? And what proof is there? Taking us through the key hauntings that have obsessed the world, from the true events that inspired Henry James's classic The Turn of the Screw right up to the present day, Roger Clarke unfolds a story of class conflict, charlatans, and true believers. The cast list includes royalty and prime ministers, Samuel Johnson, John Wesley, Harry Houdini, and Adolf Hitler. The chapters cover everything from religious beliefs to modern developments in neuroscience, the medicine of ghosts, and the technology of ghosthunting. There are haunted WWI submarines, houses so blighted by phantoms they are demolished, a seventeenth-century Ghost Hunter General, and the emergence of the Victorian flash mob, where hundreds would stand outside rumored sites all night waiting to catch sight of a dead face at a window. Written as grippingly as the best ghost fiction, A Natural History of Ghosts takes us on an unforgettable hunt through the most haunted places of the last five hundred years and our longing to believe.
If Lexi Balefire’s matchmaking skills seem like magic, it’s for a good reason—witchiness has always run in the family. Without access to her full powers, Lexi can’t help wondering if she’ll ever control the Balefire legacy—or end up a wicked witch like her mother and grandmother before her. When a formerly happy client gets dumped unexpectedly, Lexi must pick up the pieces in order to save her business—all while dealing with four fighting faerie godmothers, an obnoxious arch-nemesis, and the only man to ever light her fire.
"Ghost Behind The Sun", Tav Falco's sprawling study of Memphis, begins with the Civil War massacre at Fort Pillow, the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878 and the grisly murders of the Harp Brothers. Falco traces these legends of Reconstruction-era Memphis to an equally brutal twentieth century underworld – Beale Street kingpin Jim Canaan, Edward Crump's political machine, the Dixie Mafia, and others. Also included are revelatory dialogues concerning the city’s many music legends, from rockabilly icons Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Feathers to more underground figures such as Jim Dickinson and country blues wailer Jessie Mae Hemphill. Interwoven with these accounts is an autobiographical history of Falco’s own time in Memphis, including his involvement with performance art ensemble Insect Trust, working with pop/rock maverick Alex Chilton, and the formation of his seminal rock and roll band, Panther Burns. Illustrated throughout.
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
THE FIRST HAUNTED BOOKSHOP MYSTERY FROM NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR CLEO COYLE—WRITING AS ALICE KIMBERLY “Part cozy and part hard-boiled detective novel with traces of the supernatural, The Ghost and Mrs. McClure is just a lot of fun.”—The Mystery Reader Young widow Penelope Thornton-McClure and her old Aunt Sadie are making ends meet by managing a mystery book shop—a quaint Rhode Island landmark rumored to be haunted. Pen may not believe in ghosts, but she does believe in good publicity—like nabbing Timothy Brennan for a book signing. But soon after the bestselling thriller writer reveals a secret about the store’s link to a 1940s murder, he keels over dead—and right in the middle of the store’s new Community Events space. Who gives Mrs. McClure the first clue that it was murder? The bookstore’s full-time ghost—a PI murdered on the very spot more than fifty years ago. Is he a figment of Pen’s overactive imagination? Or is the oddly likable fedora-wearing specter the only hope Pen has to solve the crime? You can bet your everlasting life on it...
A natural history of the supernatural from Roger Clarke, lifelong investigator into England's creepiest real-life ghost stories 'Is there anybody out there?' No matter how rationally we order our lives, few of us are completely immune to the suggestion of the uncanny and the fear of the dark. The subject of whether ghosts exist has fascinated some of the finest minds in history and it remains a subject of overwhelming interest today. This is the first comprehensive, authoritative and readable history of the evolution of the ghost in the west, examining as every good natural history should, the behaviour of the subject in its preferred environment: the stories we tell each other. What explains sightings of ghosts? Why do they fascinate us? What exactly did the haunted see? What did they believe? And what proof is there? Taking us through the key hauntings that have obsessed the world from the poltergeist of Cock Lane through the true events that inspired The Turn of the Screw and the dark events of Borley Rectory right up to the present day, Roger Clarke unfolds a story of class conflict, charlatans and true believers. His surprising castlist ranges from Samuel Johnson to John Wesley, and from Harry Houdini to Adolf Hitler. Inspired by a childhood spent in two haunted houses, Roger Clarke has spent much of his life trying to see a ghost. Written as grippingly as the best ghost fiction, A Natural History of Ghosts takes us on an unforgettable hunt through the most haunted places of the last five hundred years and our longing to believe.
Whoever said that ghosts exist must be out of their mind. Oh, wait. That was me. I said that. If you’d told me yesterday that ghosts were real, I would have smiled, nodded, and called a shrink to fix your deluded little mind. Now it’s my turn to question my sanity when the ghost of my best friend turns up in my apartment. Was it the tequila shots the night before causing this apparition? Or one too many bumps to the head — let’s face it, clumsy is my middle name; it really wouldn’t surprise me if I’d done some irreparable damage to my grey matter over the years. Now I have to accept that the paranormal does, in fact, exist. But sadly, my ghost friend is lacking something besides his body. His memory. He doesn’t know how he died but suspects foul play, and he wants my help to find his killer. I can’t refuse, I’m a sucker for a good mystery, and the chance to bring my friend's killer to justice is too good to pass up. Surprises abound as I discover a secret talent for sleuthing, not to mention an unexpected inheritance of a talking cat, among other things. But the biggest problem of all? Captain Cowboy Hot Pants, or as he likes to be called, Detective Kade Galloway of the Firefly Bay PD. He’s one smokin’ cop, but my distrust of the police runs deep, and despite his assurances that he’s here to help, can I really trust him, or is his offer of assistance designed to keep me from discovering the truth? I guess I’ll find out when death comes knocking on my door. Join Audrey Fitzgerald in the Ghost Detective series, a paranormal cozy mystery featuring a cat, a ghost, and a murder to solve.
