Magic, divination, rituals, and spirits in Hong Kong.

Woman rescues man.

Do I need to say more to make you want to read this? How about: original and well-researched, a mix of romance, sleuthing, and adventure?

The plot spirals out from Selkie and Alister’s search for his son, who was abducted thirty years ago, into a struggle to rescue Alister’s soul from sorcery. As always, Selkie is courageous and intuitive, and helped by a team of friends and intriguing new allies. I loved the scene with the “villain hitters.” And the effect on the villain, if that character can be called one. At times, I found myself wondering how the story might have played out if Selkie’s best friends hadn’t been available, if she’d had to rely only on her new acquaintances in a strange place. But her world is one of connections—emotional, social, spiritual, and synchronistic.

After finishing this book, I began reading a conventional cozy mystery and went into Selkie Moon withdrawal. Longing for the truly out-of-the ordinary.

This is the last big multi-author giveaway that I'll participate in for a while, perhaps the only one this year, so dig in.

I recommend Virginia King’s Laying Ghosts, the prequel to her Selkie Moon Series. Fans of my Mae Martin books will probably like this series, mystical mysteries with strong settings and psychological depth.

Theresa Crater’s Under the Stone Paw has elements of mystery, science fiction, and fantasy. I don’t normally read the latter two genres, but I was so caught up in her portrayal of Egypt and its ancient sites, I broke my normal genre reading boundaries.

British author Jordaina Sydney Robinson has been my critique partner for years. I’m not being biased when I say she’s one of the funniest and most original writers in the mystery genre. Beyond Dead is more fun than you ever imagined the afterlife could be.

You can download these and many others, including my book Shaman's Blues, the first and only time it ever will be free. Happy reading in the new year.

The genre of supernatural suspense is broad, with varying types and degrees of “paranormality” (I think I just invented a word), so there’s something here for all tastes.

I’ve read and can enthusiastically recommended three of the books in this promotion.

M.L. Eaton and Virginia King are my mystical mystery sisters, and we share a reading audience. When the Clocks Stopped is a time-slip mystery spanning two centuries in a small English village on Romney Marsh. The language is beautiful and the plot truly original, a blend of history and mystery. I totally fall into the settings, swept away, and feel as if I know the characters as real people. Laying Ghosts, like all of Virginia King’s work, is powerful psychological suspense influenced by folklore and mythology while set in current times. When I read her books, I always stay up later than I mean to, wrapped up in Selkie Moon’s adventures, and then have profound, provocative dreams.

The other book I want to rave about is Beyond Dead, a paranormal cozy mystery by Jordaina Sydney Robinson. What if when you died, you didn’t go to hell, but to work? Her style and humor are incomparable, especially the dialogue.

The Calling, book one in my Mae Martin Psychic Mystery series, is part of this promotion as well.

Happy reading! I hope you discover some new favorite authors.

     Writers enjoy having the power of God over their characters, but what if they also attract the forces of the devil? What if the power of life and death in a fiction translates into a ‘real’ existence, if some elements of the authors omnipresence on the page slips into physical life? The book is very much paranormal, some of a magical realism bend and some with a quasi-religious one. Through excepting the premise that many good versus evil, religious/paranormal boundaries collide in mystical ways one can enjoy the book. Most of us have little trouble suspending belief to enjoy a good yarn. I preferred to read this is the imagined world of a psychotic personality in total meltdown. This was easy given that the book is written in first person. I enjoyed this as a false reality from which we are supposed to hope the character voice, Alexa, will escape. I was a bit underwhelmed by the lengths Bell went to in exploring the threads of the story as it drew to the end, as for me the detail rather reduced the power of resolution. Climatic events, both in life and books, are best enjoyed without distracting reflections on the rationality of the mechanics.

     This book is well written, describing Alexa’s world in a way that easily paints strong scenes in one’s mind. As a writer, I can appreciate the mind games as Alexa the well-established, if quite famous, author, struggles to complete her trilogy. Some of the other characters, especially Margaret, her book editor, are very well-rounded. I may have enjoyed the book more with a few chapters written from the mind of Margaret, watching the mental breakdown of her number one selling author.

     This is the second book of Bell’s I have read. She is a very gifted writer who might achieve greater success with psychological thrillers without the distraction of paranormal elements. Provided, of course, she could find the discipline of scripting her stories without occasionally falling for the convenient escapes of the unrestrained supernatural.

     It should be obvious that I enjoyed this book more for the qualities of Bell’s descriptive writing than the story it tells. However, I am sure that those that relish the buy-in to the paranormal will find this to be a great read. There are plenty of original elements as well as standard themes of the paranormal and mystical realism genres. We have here a, ‘watch what you wish for’ morality tale. The allegorical foundations of the theme resonate throughout. The four stars rather than five isn’t a devaluation of the Bell’s work. Rather, it reflects my view that this book, despite all its qualities, didn’t do talent full justice.

AMAZON LINK

By: Jennifer McMahon 

ISBN: 9780385541367

Publisher: Doubleday

Publication Date: 4/25/2017 

Format: Hardcover 

My Rating: 3 Stars

From the author of The Night Sister and The Winter People comes — BURNTOWN. Where do you even begin trying to describe a book like this? It is one of a kind.

From eccentric, colorful, to quirky, and wacky . . . a cast of misfits. Mix in a crime, a murder, a family’s past, a stolen invention, mystery, suspense, and crossing heavily into the mystical, supernatural and paranormal world.

Jennifer McMahon takes readers on a wild, crazy ride with BURNTOWN —meeting every character and scene imaginable. My head is still spinning.

As the book starts out it grabbed me immediately. A great set up. However, shortly thereafter when all the crazy things begin, I knew this book was not for me; however, continued to read to discover how it would unfold. However, I found myself skipping over many parts.

The book is broken into parts: Before: Miles. Then After, alternating between Necco, Theo, Pru, and Fred. Then one year later with Necco.

Set in Braxton, Vermont, It is 1975 and Miles Sandeski a ten- year- old boy who has a creative mind and love to play Robin Hood is spying on his mom, Elizabeth Sandeski outdoors while she is in their backyard.

She seems to be more adventurous, and mysterious; dancing with her brass elephant charm bracelet. She is beautiful. Miles thinks of her as a Goddesses, like Aphrodite. She looks like a movie star. He does not like for her to smoke since it is bad for her, so he played a little trick with her cigarettes.

However, as she is smoking, lying in the sun. The unexpected happens. Some person comes from the shadows, in a circus mask like a rubber chicken from nowhere. He comes up behind her and draws a blade across her throat. Miles is stunned and has no clue what is happening.

Miles uses his bow and arrow and hits him. Then all of a sudden he is afraid the man will come after him. Until his experiment pops and scares the man off.

Soon the town is rattled by a murder- suicide. After Elizabeth was slain in the backyard of the family home, with Miles as witness, he goes to the neighbor and police was called. But the bloodstained clothing, a rubber chicken mask, and a kitchen knife were found in the trunk of the family car. An arrest was made for Mr. Sandeski.

Martin Sandeski ran an appliance and repair service company and was in a jazz band, Three Bags Full. Miles knew it was not his father who was the chicken man. His father is the man he loved and taught him so much. Appears Martin had told several of his friends, he believed his wife was having an affair. Shortly thereafter, Martin took his own life, hours after his arrest. He hung himself while in police custody.

They did not find the killer, and Miles goes and lives with his aunt. However, his dad left him a letter explaining where to find the plans he has hidden. As a boy, he spoke of these plans from Thomas Edison.

He was not to share this with his Aunt Holly or anyone. He was passing down some special plans. His grandfather worked for Thomas Edison at his factory and plans were stolen. He told them where they were hidden. His dad left him instructions and plans to hold on to them and one day the Edison machine would change their lives, and possibly the entire world. A way to communicate with the dead?

Then he meets Lily. Her mother had died and her dad drank. Her brother Lloyd became close to Miles. She tells Miles she is gifted as well as her brother. She can see things.

Later they marry and have two a daughter— Eva. Soon this boy, Errol joins the family. Miles continues to carry this little charm elephant from his mom. Who had given it to her? Also, what had the killer whispered to her that last day that had made her smile?

He knows she should let it go, but he can’t. He needs to find the man who killed his mother. What if the dead could speak? What if he built the machine and it actually worked? He could find the answers. Miles became a professor. He was successful and talented.

Then there is the word of flood warnings. The chicken mask. The Chicken Man is dead because he killed him, didn't he? He decides to destroy everything in the workshop, even the machine. He had the plans to rebuild somewhere safe. From here we go to After. From here on out, the book completely changes.

Necco (Eva) has changed her name. Miles and Errol, dead from the flood. Lily and Eva (now Necco) are living as vagrants. From homeless to a camp with a group of women. Not the typical sleepy New England college town for the dark residents who live among the remains of its abandoned mills and factories, it’s known as “Burntown.”

After the mother dies, Necco is running and being chased by an evil man called “Snake Eyes or Chicken Man”. He goes by many names. A bad man is looking for them, her mom says. A walking shadow, a black hole man. He has such power, he can do things, like fly. He can spy on you in our dreams. The Kind of Liars.

He was the one responsible for the Great Flood and all the terrible things. Even responsible for what happened to their grandparents, and Miles and Errol. He meant to drown them too. He is ever vigilant. He is sneaky. He can change his appearance from a businessman to a biker.

Was her mother trying to blame a mythical monster for all the bad things that had happened to them?

Necco has no memories of the flood. The very event that caused them to live on the streets. Under the bridge where the women did the snuff, saw visions, ate fire. Burntown. All this had broken her mother. The world was changing she said. One day he would find them. Her visions.

“ . . . the truth isn’t something you want to look in the face. Sometimes you’re better off not knowing.”

A girl fleeing a drug dealer, a fat woman, the circus, elephant, the strongman, birds, a doll, a ghost from her past, plus much more. . .

“The things that scare us the most, the things we think might hurt us . . . they’re the things that make us whole.”

The author mentions she worked years ago at a homeless shelter in Portland, Oregon and assume this is where she received her inspiration for the different stereotypes of homelessness and their stories.

Was disappointed Cassandra Campbell (my favorite narrator), was not narrating Burntown, as in McMahon past audiobooks. (Abby Craden) for this one. However, not sure I would be up to re-read (listen) to this one again anyway.

I am not a fan of supernatural, or paranormal. I do not mind a little magical realism sprinkled with some mystery and suspense; however, this was more than a little and "over the top." For those who enjoy this sort of thing may find entertaining. Not to say McMahon is not a skilled and talented writer. This one was just not for me.

A special thank you to Doubleday and NetGalley for an early reading copy.

JDCMustReadBooks