Ghosts

Darci Hannah: A Fatal Feast at Bramsford Manor

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Food & Spirits #1

Paranormal cozies are tricky things because the author has to balance a mystery that is solvable by the very corporeal detectives, while working in elements of myth and legend that often provide incorporeal clues. Darci Hannah starts off a new series with A Fatal Feast at Bramsford Manor. At first, I wasn’t sure when the paranormal was going to play in, as the main character Bridget “Bunny” MacBride is a chef on a cooking show under the main host. She is then offered a new contract where she will be the primary chef on a series that will be called Food & Spirits. Now, Bunny made one rather large mistake when accepting this particular job – she didn’t explore the contract thoroughly before signing. If she had, she might have seen that the ‘Spirit’ part of the show was not referring to beverages but to the dearly departed. Her main role is to be preparing meals to attract sprits to the table. Needless to say, she was far from pleased with that turn of events, but decides to stick with her contract and make the best of it. She keeps her fingers crossed that nothing spooky happens to her. read more

Frank Anthony Polito: Haunted to Death

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Domestic Partners in Crime #3

If you’re from southeast Michigan, these books really should be a must read.  This zippy cozy series is set in Pleasant Ridge and features Michigan details like Shinola watches and Sanders bumpy cake, but even if you aren’t from the mitten, these are still fun reads.  Main characters and life partners PJ and JP are, among other things, hosts of an “HDTV” home renovation series, where they take old houses and restore them to their former glory.  This charming gay couple reminds me strongly of my favorite couple on HGTV’s Detroit based Bargain Block, and like it or not, their faces have attached themselves to my reading of the books. read more

Molly MacRae: Come Shell or High Water

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Series Debut – Haunted Shell Shop #1

Molly MacRae launches her new haunted shell shop mystery series with Come Shell or High Water. Newly widowed Maureen Nash heads to Ocracoke Island to follow up on some rather odd letters from the shell shop owner. Maureen is a Malacologist and teller of stories and legends. Malacologist is the term for someone who studies mollusks, an interesting factoid I enjoyed learning. One might think that Maureen of the mollusks could have picked a better time to visit the island than right in the middle of hurricane season. Apparently, though, that is a prime time to find some seaside treasures of the shelled variety. Maureen has quite the journey to the island, but the real adventure starts when she literally trips over a body, then stumbles through a series of unfortunate events that results in compromised memory, becoming a murder suspect, and meeting a ghost. read more

Simone St. James: The Sun Down Motel

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Simone St. James is one of the best of all modern gothic novelists, and importantly, the ghosts in her books are real, they’re not actually mysterious human strangers hanging around in vacant buildings for nefarious reasons.  She combines her ghost stories with cracking good mysteries, an irresistible combination, and unlike practically any other mystery novelist, the characters are pretty much exclusively female.  There are a few male characters for sure, but they are more on the window dressing side of things.  It’s the ladies that carry the narrative. read more

D.M. Pulley: No One’s Home

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Meet D.M. Pulley at the downtown library on Saturday, October 19 at 2 p.m.

This is an honest to god ghost story, inspired by Shirley Jackson’s classic The Haunting of Hill House.  It’s guaranteed to give you the shivers.  Threading together the stories of several – very tragic –families who have shared the same house from 1922 to the present, the connections move into sharper focus as the book unfolds.

The story opens with the Spielman family, who are making a move from Boston to the wealthy Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, where they are amazed by the amount of house they can get for their money.  While Rawlingswood seems impressive, it’s also a graffiti covered wreck, with stripped pipes and broken windows.  The graffiti is more than disturbing, calling the house a “murder house” and referencing dead girls. As Myron and Margot check the place out, Myron gets more and more excited, and Margot, more and more worried.  Despite her objections they buy the house and begin to renovate it immediately, where all kinds of things go wrong, spooking the contractors, who eventually refuse to go up into the attic at all. read more