Nine Lives and Alibis by Cate Conte

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

It’s Halloween in Daybreak Harbor, and this year the town is trying attract some of the tourist trade that Salem, Massachusetts has enjoyed.  Of course, Daybreak doesn’t have quite the witchy history that Salem does, but they have managed to nab one of Salem’s big name draws, a psychic named Balfour Dempsey who has quite the following.  Not everyone in town is on board, though—especially not Jacob Blair, owner of the inn where Balfour will be staying doing his readings.  Maddie thinks that’s odd since it’s great publicity, especially as the inn has a few mysteries of its own—including an unsolved murder.

Maddie is hoping to attract attention for JJ’s House of Purrs, her cat café where rescue cats are up for adoption and people can enjoy delicious coffee and treats.  She’s not a believer in psychic phenomena, but she is a believer in helping the town’s merchants earn money to tide them over the winter when customers are thin on the ground.

The town is going to get attention, all right:  just as the festivities are getting under way, a body is found… and it looks like murder.

This is the seventh in the Cat Café Mysteries and for me, it’s the most satisfying one yet.  Our heroine Maddie seems to have matured a bit, which is a change for the better.  I liked the slightly supernatural flavor that this one added—it’s handled so that  a reader can believe there are other forces at work but there are also plausible explanations for most things as well. I’m looking forward to the next one!

You need not have read any of the others in the series to enjoy this one. 

Titles in order:

Cat About Town

Purrder She Wrote

The Tell Tail Heart

A Whisker of a Doubt

Claws for Alarm Gone But Not Furgotten

Nine Lives and Alibis

The Drowning Kind by Jennifer McMahon

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Jackie is a social worker and therapist, dealing mostly with troubled children, helping them to process traumas and build family and social relationships.  She’s good at it; she’s not so good at repairing breaks with her own family, especially not with her sister, Lexie.  Lexie was always the golden child, the one for whom things came easily.  She was also very good at pushing people’s buttons, especially Jackie’s.

But Lexie has struggled with her mental heath the past few years, and Jackie has tried to distance herself—both literally and figuratively.  She’s moved across the country and limited her contact with her erratic sister, ignoring phone calls and never visiting. After one particularly manic episode, Jackie steels herself and returns Lexie’s call but Lexie doesn’t answer.

Lexie has drowned in the family pool at their grandmother’s house.

Jackie—or Jax, as Lexie dubbed her, calling them the X girls—goes to clear out Lexie’s things and finds that Lexie had become obsessed with researching the history of their family and their property, especially the spring that feeds the pool.  There are a lot of stories about that spring: it’s rumored to have healing properties. It’s also rumored to grant wishes.

One should always be careful what one wishes for.

I am not a horror reader as a rule.  I don’t care for gore and guts or slime.  This time of year, though, I do start looking for books that are a bit creepy, maybe with ghosts, and with lots of atmosphere.  Jennifer McMahon has a number of books out that fit that description so I decided to give The Drowning Kind a try.  It met my expectations wonderfully. I like character-driven books, which this is.  The story is told from Jackie’s point of view, but also from the perspective of Ethel, a young wife in the late 1920s who goes with her husband to a hotel rumored to have the most amazing healing spring. It’s very well-written, with beautifully descriptive passages.  Even though I had a pretty good idea where the plot was going, I was anxious to see what would happen next.  I found myself caught up in both worlds, and hated to have to close the book. The Drowning Kind was a memorable novel for me and I expect I will be reading other titles by Jennifer McMahon in the future.

The Haunted South: Where Ghosts Still Roam by Nancy Roberts

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Some of my fondest memories are about sitting and listening to ghost stories told by family members, usually during thunderstorms—and especially when the lights went out.  These weren’t “jump-scare” stories like “I Want My Big Toe” but local ghost stories and I lapped them up.

Nancy Roberts collected stories like the ones I heard.  She did storytelling programs and   was the author of over a dozen books, mostly ghost stories of various regions: she lived in North Carolina, so there are several set in the Appalachian region or in the South. There’s a bit of a folklore feel to the stories, which I also find appealing.

This particular book was originally published in 1971 and has been reprinted numerous times.  It has 14 stories set in various locations, including West Virginia, Alabama, and South Carolina.  There are the “Little People” of Cherokee lore, a phantom train wreck, and of course, a Gray Lady, but somehow I found these retellings to be more interesting than many I’ve read—possibly because Roberts was a storyteller herself. She also gives a bit more context to some of the stories.  She also isn’t trying to either scare or convince the reader:  she is simply telling what happened.  That also reminded me of our family ghost stories: as my mother used to say, the supernatural was just a part of life.

Although they were all good, I did have a couple of favorites.  One was “The Demon of Wizard Clip,” which is about a dying man’s last wish and the consequences when he doesn’t get it.  I did a quick search and found several references to the story, all of which jibe with Roberts’ retelling. There are historical records as well.  Another favorite was “The Grey Lady,” which is of a French ghost who followed her family to South Carolina.  There’s a photo of the house she was said to haunt, even after it was turned into an inn.  Alas, it was torn down in the 1960s.

If you are in the mood for some ghostly tales, any title by Nancy Roberts is a pretty good bet.  The stories are brief, good for dipping into for a few minutes and then picking up again.

Bad Moon Rising: Newer names in horror fiction

Compiled by Christy 

October is the time for spooky stories and creepy tales!  Usually some of  the first names that come to mind when horror books are mentioned are Stephen King, Dean Koontz, John Saul, Shirley Jackson, F. Paul Wilison, Anne Rice,  and Octavia Butler. Here are some newer names in horror whose books you may want to try:

Grady Hendrix’s books are lively, bold, and not without a little social commentary. From a haunted IKEA-like big box store to a teen possessed in the 1980s, Hendrix’s premises are attention grabbing. In The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, a group of housewives in the 1990s must team up to battle a vampire. Hendrix’s other works include Horrorstör, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, The Final Girl Support Group, We Sold Our Souls, How to Sell a Haunted House, and 2025's Witchcraft for Wayward Girls.

  

Though he has written over a dozen novels, Stephen Graham Jones’ breakthrough hit was 2019’s The Only Good Indians, a tale of a vengeful elk spirit. Giving the horror genre a needed breath of fresh air, Jones continued his success with My Heart is a Chainsaw, the first in a trilogy about Jade, a slasher-obsessed teenage outcast who fears (hopes?) her slasher fantasies will soon come true. She tries to warn her small town officials but is repeatedly rebuffed. The other two books are Don't Fear the Reaper and Angel of Indian Lake. His most recent title is I Was a Teenage Slasher.

Clay McLeod Chapman has dabbled in mystery and even middle grade novels, but his most recent releases have been horror. The Remaking weaves the story of an old folk legend, the 1970s movie it’s based on, the 1990s remake, and a subsequent podcast into a meta-horror tale. Whisper Down the Lane is a fictionalized take of the McMartin preschool trial that occurred during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Other titles include What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters. 

Darcy Coates is an Australian author who specializes in horror and suspense who has been called "the queen of atmospheric suspense". One popular series is Gravekeeper. Keira is a psychic who can help the dead move on, but there's something menacing lurking in the shadows. The first book in the series is The Whispering Dead.

Tananarive Due writes horror fiction with supernatural elements, folklore, and socially conscious themes. In The Good House, Angela returns to her Gramma's house only to find a malevolent force seems to inhabit the place, and it drives people to desperate and violent acts. 

  

Rivers Solomon has tried her hand at science fiction and general fantasy. With Sorrowland, she blends gothic horror, fantasy, magical realism, and body horror into what The Guardian calls “an electrifying gothic techno-thriller”. Vern is heavily pregnant when she escapes from a strict religious compound into the woods. After giving birth to twins, Vern vows to keep them away from the dangerous outside world. She would do anything to protect her children, even if means strangely transforming her body. Solomon's upcoming novel is a haunted house tale called Model Home.

Vampires, coming-of-age, magical realism, socialites, the Jazz Age, ancient Mayan gods, 1970s noir. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is not interested in her works staying in a particular box. In Mexican Gothic, Moreno-Garcia takes on gothic horror and tells the story of Noemí who is summoned by her frantic cousin Catalina to come save her from her new husband. Noemí travels to the Mexican countryside to the remote mansion of the newlyweds, in the hopes of helping in some way. But digging deeper in this family’s past may just lead to violence and madness. Moreno-Garcia also has a recent title about a cursed film called Silver Nitrate.

Christina Henry is best known for her dark re-tellings of classic stories such as Lost Boy (Peter Pan) and Horseman (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow). In The House That Horror Built, a single mom takes a job cleaning a revered horror director's house – only to discover some terrifying secrets. Other titles include Near the Bone and Good Girls Don't Die.

 

  

Alma Katsu is an award-winning author of thrillers, horror, urban fantasy, and historical fiction. She blends genres to create unforgettable stories. In The Hunger, she vividly tells the story of the Donner Party disaster… only with supernatural elements. Vivid descriptions, strong characterizations, and a rising sense of dread make the travelers wonder if there's something out there – or if there's something among them. 

Paul Tremblay’s novels are complex and stylishly written.  His horror stories often involve ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations.  A Head Full of Ghosts is the story of the struggling Barrett family.  John Barrett has lost his job and has sought solace in religion, causing conflict with his wife.  When their elder daughter begins to behave erratically, John believes she has become possessed. Tremblay is also the author of The Cabin at the End of the World and Horror Movie.

The Art of the English Murder by Lucy Worsley

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Historian Worsley sets out to do an exploration of famous murders and the literature they inspired.  She begins by telling the reader about Thomas De Quincey’s 1827 essay, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” which purports to be the thoughts of a member of the imaginary “Society of Connoisseurs in Murder” who explain what makes a good murder and rates them according to their qualities.  De Quincey is actually commenting on a cultural phenomenon of the time: murder as something exciting and entertaining.

Worsley pinpoints the start of this fascination with the 1811 Ratcliffe Highway murders.  A married couple, their three-month-old son, and their apprentice were discovered brutally murdered in their shop/home; twelve days later, another merchant, his wife, and a serving girl were slaughtered.  Public interest was intense; Worsley says that it created a new class of journalism, murder reporting.  It seemed that the British public could not get enough of such stories.  Newspapers, cheap publications with vivid (and often invented) details of sensational stories, and even puppet shows pandered to this new form of entertainment.

During the course of the book, she discusses how writers helped this obsession and how over time, real cases were given fictional treatments.  All this was to help satisfy the public appetite for crime.  Early writers such as Wilkie Collins helped pave the way for later authors, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.

Along with the development of this murder mania, England was beginning to develop a police force.  At first these fledgling officers of the law were viewed with deep suspicion as busybodies and unreliable, but writers helped to turn the tide of public opinion.  Charles Dickens was one of the early proponents of the police; he wrote glowing articles about the new detective branch and even used real officer Inspector Field as a model for his Bleak House character Inspector Branch.

Readers of both true crime and fictional crime will find much of interest in this book, written with Worsley’s breezy charm.

Note: There was a TV series hosted by Worsley on this topic under the title “A Very British Murder.”

A Season with the Witch by J.W. Ocker

 Note:  This blog was first run in 2018 but we thought it was worth running again!

Reviewed by Christy

            J.W. Ocker likes to travel quite a bit. But his destinations are almost always weird – so much so that he regularly documents his adventures in the travelogue blog Odd Things I’ve Seen. He’s written several books on his travels including Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe.  To write  A Season with the Witch, he moves his wife and daughters into Salem, MA for the entire month of October to observe and participate in their Haunted Happenings. Anyone with a love of history and all things weird and creepy would probably get a kick out of Salem during the month of Halloween. Just be sure to book many, many months in advance.

            Ocker begins with a brief overview of the Salem Witch Trials and America’s fascination with them. He describes historical sites pertinent to the trials including grave sites, judges’ homes, and where the gallows supposedly stood. (Behind a Walgreens now, in case you’re interested.) He then goes on to discuss the various kitschy museums around town and even throws in some pirate and maritime history for good measure. He interviews street performers, street preachers, shop and restaurant owners, actual witches who live and practice in Salem, and regular every day Salemites. He eats carnival food and drinks Candy Corntinis. (Any autumn or Halloween themed cocktail he sees, he tries.) He visits the filming locations for movies like Hocus Pocus, The Lords of Salem and a string of Salem-related episodes of Bewitched. He also talks in depth about the often-maligned statue of Elizabeth Montgomery. On the big night he and his wife take their daughters trick or treating down a street where the residents sit on their porches to hand out candy. (And in one case, pumpkin pie jello shots for the adults!) One cheery resident wrote down where each trick or treater was from (she was already up to six different states), and another proclaimed he had given out 900 pieces of candy the previous year. And that’s not even getting into the wild party that is Essex Pedestrian Mall on Halloween Night.

            This book was so much fun to read. Ocker’s writing is warm, conversational, and often times laugh out loud funny. As a self-described “spooky person”, he was clearly having a blast living in and writing about Salem, and it’s contagious.  Although I would love to visit Salem myself one day I already feel like I’ve at least passed through.

            The only negative thing I can say about A Season with the Witch is that it is full of simple grammatical and spelling mistakes. He gets names wrong (including Jack Skellington and Rob Zombie’s wife), and it seems as if a more thorough proof reading was skipped. I’m not sure why that would be unless they were rushing to get it out in time for Halloween. Regardless, while irritating, it wasn’t enough to damper my enjoyment. I think anyone who is interested in history, pop culture, travel, or Halloween will enjoy this book immensely.

Burning Bright by Ron Rash; and Other Appalachian Authors

 

The Bristol Public Library together with Washington County Virginia Public Library System and the Birthplace of Country Music Museum were awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for The Big Read.  The theme is “Where We Live,” and the book selected is Burning Bright by Ron Rash.  Free copies of the book will be available at all three locations while supplies last.  A wide array of programs will be available, including book discussions, author talks, creative writing workshops, and more. Click here for more information. 

Ron Rash is known for both his novels and his short stories which portray life in the Appalachian region.  A professor and a poet, Rash’s stories can be gritty and beautiful at the same time.  His stories are set in various time periods but all are memorable.  Burning Bright is a superb collection of his stories; novels include The Cove and Serena.

Other Appalachian authors include:

Lee Smith was born in Grundy, VA and began writing stories in elementary school. She is the author of many acclaimed novels and short story collections, including Family Linen, Black Mountain Breakdown, Fair and Tender Ladies, and Devil’s Dream.

Silas House was working as a rural mail carrier just before he sold his first novel, Clay’s Quilt. Clay Sizemore is a young miner who is falling in love with Alma, a talented fiddler trying to escape an abusive husband. Other titles include A Parchment of Leaves and The Coal Tattoo.          

Sharyn McCrumb is best known for her Ballad novels set in Appalachia. Many draw on regional history and legends as part of the story.  Titles include She Walks These Hills, Unquiet Grave, The Ballad of Tom Dooley, and The Devil Amongst the Lawyers.

Julia Keller was a journalist before turning her attention to fiction.  Her Bell Elkins series follows a prosecutor in the rural West Virginia town of Acker’s Gap.  In A Killing in the Hills, the first book in the series, three men are gunned down in a local dinner in broad daylight. To make matters worse, one of the witnesses was Bell’s own teenage daughter. Keller shows both the beauty and the troubles of the area, and the harm addiction brings.

Wiley Cash writes about his native North Carolina in his gothic, character-driven novels.  Like Rash, Cash doesn’t hesitate to show the darker side of human nature but love can be a powerful countermeasure.  His first novel was A Land More Kind Than Home.          

Ann Pancake grew up in West Virginia and her writing tends to be set in the Appalachian region.  Her work includes novel, short stories, and essays.  Strange as This Weather Has Been is a contemporary novel about a family dealing with the rise and fall of the mining industry and mountaintop removal. 

Amy Greene writes novels set in East Tennessee.  Long Man is set in 1936, when the TVA wants to dam the river and flood the surrounding communities. Annie Clyde Dotson’s family has lived on this land for generations, and she is determined to try to hold on to it for her daughter.

Denise Giardina writes a variety of historical fiction. Born in Bluefield, WV, she is the author of two acclaimed Appalachian novels.  Storming Heaven begins in the 1890s, when miners began to unionize; Unquiet Earth picks up in the 1930s. Giardina likes to tell her stories through her characters, presenting different viewpoints.

Brian Panowich writes gritty thrillers that have been dubbed “Country Noir” for vivid landscapes and violent crime.   In Bull Mountain, a sheriff whose family has lived on the land for generations has to contend with balancing duty and family ties. 

Other authors to consider:  Adriana Trigiani, Jesse Stuart, Barbara Kingsolver, Robert Morgan, Charles Frazier