"Tangled Up With The Dead: An Historical Ghost Story"

"Between the years of 1854 and 1929," writes Chico novelist Cathy Chase, "from the large cities in the Eastern part of the United States, orphaned or abandoned children were loaded onto trains in large groups and sent West to be given to families. As many as 250,000 children were relocated." From that starting point, Chase spins the story of one of the orphans, fifteen-year-old Hannah Banks, who is taken to the tiny town of Sweetser, Indiana to begin life anew. 

But all is not right. The story's narrator, Hannah herself, reports "the old familiar feeling of hot tingling darts shooting down my arms and into my fingers." What Hannah will encounter threatens her very life; it is a force from the depths of supernatural horror.

But to help the reader make sense of events, Jane, Hannah's mother, takes over the story. It is 1884, sixteen years before Hannah's arrival in Sweetser. Jane remembers her romance with Jonathan Banks a year before, who took her through the church graveyard where she spotted the marker of the Slaughter family who had lived in a cabin on the outskirts of town. 

Daniel, the father, came home roaring drunk one night and burned the place down, killing them all, including his wife, Martha, and young daughter, Emily. Another family, the Spectors, eventually built on top of the remains. Jane is Jane Spector, and she's shaken by this revelation, especially because she's had a "secret friend who's visited me in my room since childhood"--named Daniel. "Spector"; "Slaughter": do not take these names for granted.

Jonathan and Jane fall in love, but Jane's invisible friend, Daniel, is not pleased. Not pleased at all. As Jane tells Jonathan, "I think the Daniel who resides in this house, who wants to keep me, is the same Daniel who killed his wife and child. He is an evil demon." Then comes the voice of Daniel in Jane's head: "I order you to call off your wedding."

Daniel will stop at nothing to keep Jane for himself. The shocking result forms the background to Hannah's own supernatural battles that will keep readers turning pages until the last.

"Dark Associations"

Chico writer Marie Sutro evokes the gritty reality of police investigations in a stunning debut novel of violence, eroticism, and suspense that holds the reader in its grip until the very end. In "Dark Associations" ($9.99 in paperback from Viper Press; also for Amazon Kindle) a serial killer, a psychopath obsessed with medieval torture methods, horribly mutilates a succession of young women whose bodies each bear the brand of the ancient Norse thorn symbol.

The novel's central figure is Kate Barnes, a Special Victims Unit detective with the San Francisco Police Department, a thirty-something beauty racked by her seeming complicity in the death of her younger sister when they were kids.

She is paired with Detective Tyler Harding from Boston. He had failed to catch that city's "Tower Torturer" who killed seven young women. Harding and Barnes realize the murders have begun again, this time in San Francisco. And the new victims are all somehow connected to Kate.

Stymied, the department captain calls in FBI superstar profiler, Special Agent Ben Fraye, with whom Harding had worked in Boston in the fruitless effort to track down the "unknown subject."

Detective Barnes had not dealt with a psychopathic killer before, so Special Agent Fraye explains to her that the UNSUB "sees something in you--something he feels he can relate to." Such killers "cannot relate to others in terms of compassion and empathy" but, "oddly enough, while you can't figure them out, at least one of them seems to understand aspects of you--and you're the one accusing them of being emotionally handicapped."

Complicating matters is the growing attraction between Barnes and Fraye, Harding's own past with Kate, and a killer taking lives just because he wants to. The characters are deeply drawn and the complex plot provides surprises at every turn. The grisly details are there, but so also is a pulse-pounding story that keeps the pages turning.

Marie Sutro (mariesutro.com) will be signing copies of her book at Barnes and Noble in Chico this Saturday from 2:00-4:00 p.m. The author has also scheduled an interview with Nancy Wiegman, who hosts Nancy's Bookshelf on mynspr.org; readers can subscribe to the podcast version on iTunes at apple.co/2igUfQz.

"New Beginnings"

When the late Jamison Howard built the strange stone mansion in a "small town tucked away in the mountains of northern California," the locals wondered why construction workers kept adding rooms. Word was that "the matriarch Marguerite Howard was kept prisoner here by her three grown sons since her husband's death years ago."

Readers are ushered into this "Devil's Domain" when young divorcee Holland Wallace, 28, in town to care for her aunt, visits the strange abode and is mistaken for a newly-hired nanny by Jamison's stepson, Gage Langdon, 36.

So begins a romantic suspense novel of intrigue and revenge. "New Beginnings" ($16.00 in paperback from Fireside Publications, firesidepubs.com; also for Amazon Kindle), by Olivia Claire High, unfolds the story of a dysfunctional family and the power of love to set things right. The author, an Oroville resident and prolific novelist, puts a baby at the center of a mystery.

The child is the son of Gage's younger brother, James Howard, and his wife Kim. Little Jamie seems to be sickly. Holland's heart melts for him (and it doesn't hurt that there is something about the strong-willed Gage that's mightily attractive), and it's clear that the household needs a new caregiver.

Kim lives in the house, but suffers from postpartum depression and cannot care for her child. Marguerite is there, too, but though kindly she is agoraphobic and can't bear to leave the residence (so her world gets bigger by adding more rooms). James is flaky and his twin brother, Jonathan, is something of a mystery. Money seems to be no object; Gage, James and Jonathan are the "propertied brothers," and there's a connection south of the border that complicates the family dynamic.

Holland has a past of her own ("My dad's a geography buff," she tells Gage early on; "My sister's name is France and my brother's is Scotland"), but she is determined to protect Jamie when she discovers that the previous nannies had been driven from the house by drugged nightmares, and that someone is messing with the baby's food. But why?

The novel probes the recesses of the human heart but always holds out hope that there can indeed be "new beginnings."

Ever feel that someone is watching you?

Olivia Claire High's new romantic suspense novel introduces Samantha (Sam) Farris, a young school teacher soon to be married to Dr. Ryan Wade. All is bliss for the Southern California lovers until--the visions.

"I've been having strange vibes that I'm being watched," she tells her friend Catherine, "and I get this vision inside my head of a person. I think it's a person because all I can make out is a vague form, but I'm convinced a presence of some kind is there." There is indeed a presence--an obsessed woman driven by a voice in her head she claims is Ryan's late wife.

There will be a book launch signing for the Oroville author tomorrow from 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. at Curves, 2190 Myers Street in Oroville.

The story of obsession leads the couple to Hawaii and the far reaches of Northern California. Lives are at stake in "A Stranger's Eyes" ($13.95 in paperback from Fireside Publications; also available in Amazon Kindle e-book format), a sequel of sorts to "Dreams--Shadows of the Night" which featured Sam's friend Catherine Ashley. She was now married to Josh Dallas after his kidnaping in the Amazon. As Catherine listens to Sam, she tell her that "I've had prophetic nightmares. You believe you're being watched by unseen eyes. Both are occurrences not easily explained. They bring out intense emotions that cause feelings of helplessness and fear."

Samantha fears not only for Ryan's life, but that of his daughter, and makes the fateful decision to do as her accuser demands--leave them. She finds solace in a small California mountain town whose residents' lives become intertwined with her own. One might expect Ryan to come to the rescue, and festivities to break out, but there are surprises in store. Even as obsession is dealt with there is another sinister visitation. "An unrecognizable figure," Sam tells Ryan, "came inside my head watching like before."

There is a madman on the loose, and this time the target is Ryan himself. He finds a crushed rose under his windshield wiper, a box of broken cookies, and Sam sees the spray painted words: "You're next, Mrs. Wade." The couple must make a fateful choice and the action never slows until the end.

Suspense fiction from a Willows writer

Newspaper columnist Shari Edwards, in her debut novel, tells the tale of Julie Morgan and her younger sister, Ann, who have returned to their rural Northern California hometown of Crowville to sift through their mother's effects. Julie, now in her early thirties, discovers an old newspaper story about a gruesome murder. She read the story as a little girl, the headline a shuddery memory: "Local Child's Body Found In Shallow Grave Beside the River." The child, Julie found out later, had lived in Crowville.
Now here was the old article, only this time with annotations from Ann and Julie's mother. There was a phone number, the names "Zac" and "Officer Jennings," and two places: Casper, Wyoming, and Alamosa, Colorado. And at the bottom of the article were the chilling, handwritten words: "Killer never found?"
Frightening events begin to terrorize the two women almost immediately as they clean their parents' old house to ready it for sale. Are those crunching sounds in the gravel outside just imaginary? That shadow by the window--real? But the note on the kitchen table is very real indeed. "Get out of town," it says, "or you will end up like they did."
"Murder In Mendocino" ($10 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing; available from Lyon Books in Chico and also from the author, SHASHANEE@aol.com) introduces the reader to Crowville's police chief, Sam Davis, his wife, Madge, and a handsome man in a silver Jaguar who turns out not to be a nemesis but a Denver detective, Will Jamison. Julie and Ann become convinced that their mother's death was no accident, and their father's death some years earlier in a hunting accident--well, that was no accident, either.
Even as the little group tries to unravel the mystery of the deaths of Charles and Beth Morgan, and that little girl so many years ago, death stalks Sam Davis in the form of Phillip Stone, Madge's nephew. He had escaped from a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane in Alamosa, Colorado, and had vowed to get his revenge on Sam, who put him there. Will had come to California to bring him back. But Phillip had died in a recent car accident in Mendocino, his body burned beyond recognition, right? Right?
"Murder In Mendocino" reveals all and, at the end, the reader can begin to breathe again.