Title: The Séance Garden
Author: Juliet Blackwell
Publisher: Berkley
Format; e-book ARC ( 400 p.) Requested book tour
Description:
After a cheesy ghost tour in one of California’s oldest towns stumbles upon an actual haunting, a skeptical historian of the occult becomes entangled in solving a murder case.
When Professor Harper Grae loses a bet with a friend, she finds herself on a local nighttime tour of “haunted” locations in Monterey. Harper’s a lifelong non-believer in the occult, though her academic career is devoted to the historical and societal significance of witchcraft, ghosts, and medicinal poisons of all sorts. But her skepticism immediately gets tested when the tour stumbles on the body of local artist Delilah Mason—who’s found murdered on the grounds of a nearly two-hundred-year-old mansion, once home to the infamous Perles family.
On the night Mason’s body is found, Harper catches sight of something in the house that she can’t shake, something that’s impossible to explain, at least not rationally. Soon the murder investigation reveals that this is the second time a woman has been found murdered beneath a sprawling cypress tree in the gardens of the Perles Mansion. And when Harper’s closest friend is questioned by the police, Harper fears the authorities will fail to uncover the real killer.
As Harper asks questions around town and digs deeper into the supernatural speculation and rumors surrounding the murders—two women killed in similar circumstances, separated by nearly two centuries —she sees evidence she can’t ignore that the notorious mansion truly is haunted by the ghost of Isabel Perles.
What will it cost Harper to rethink everything she’s always believed to admit that the veil between the living and the dead might actually be crossed?
My Review:
This book follows Harper as she ventures into a haunted house and finds herself drawn to the house as she walks through what she doesn't count on is digging up a dead body and what happened to her and why? This book really digs into the mystery and supernatural making you want to dig deeper and see if Harper is on the correct trail or is the story older than just Delilah Mason? Could it date back to the previous owners the Perles family who seemed mysterious in their own right.
Long hidden secrets come to light and Harper learns more about herself then she thought she knew. What will Harper do with what she learns and was justice accomplished? Definitely a fabulous story that pulled you way in and kept you going!
Juliet Blackwell was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, the youngest child of a military jet pilot from New York and a book-loving editor from Texas. She graduated with a degree in Latin American Studies from University of California, Santa Cruz, and went on to earn Masters degrees in both Anthropology and Social Work from the State University of New York, Albany.
While in graduate school Blackwell published several articles based on her fieldwork with immigrant families from Mexico and Viet Nam, as well as one full-length translation: Miguel León-Portilla’s seminal work, Endangered Cultures. She taught Medical Anthropology at SUNY-Albany, was producer for a BBC documentary about Vietnamese children left behind by US soldiers, and worked as an elementary school social worker in rural New York state. Upon her return to California, Blackwell put her amateur art forgery skills to work through the decorative painting, historical renovation, and domestic design studio she established and ran for more than a decade.
In addition to mainstream novels, Blackwell pens standalone paranormal mysteries such as The Séance Garden and Asylum Hotel, as well as the New York Times Bestselling Witchcraft Mysteries and Haunted Home Renovation series. She wrote the Agatha Award-nominated Art Lover’s Mystery series with her sister Carolyn, under the pseudonym Hailey Lind. She is past president of Northern California Sisters in Crime and former board member of Mystery Writers of America.
Blackwell divides her time between a happily haunted house in Northern California, a winery in the Bordeaux region of France, and a tiny apartment on the coast of Spain. She believes in the magic of language, travel, and cultural exchange to open hearts, minds, and souls.
