Close To Home

Close To Home by Lisa Jackson

As we say goodbye to summer, a classic ghost story may be just what you are looking for as the days become shorter and the cool, crisp nights become a reality. With autumn approaching, take some time to sit by a crackling fire and read the pages of this new release. Maybe, just maybe, you'll become a believer....

On October 31st, 1924, Angelique struggles with this drunken excuse of a man on the widow's walk of their majestic home, Blue Peacock Manor. As the blinding rain slices through the bitterly cold air, Angelique finds it hard to maintain her balance on the slippery, narrow walk high above the angry churning waters of the
Columbia River in remote Oregon. She is ready to die if it means saving the innocent children inside. The man she once professed to love forever is a crazed lunatic, and she will not succumb to his insanity without a fight. Suddenly they are both plummeting to their deaths, thus ending this tragic, twisted love story. Their bodies are never found.

On October 15th, 2014, Sarah McAdams vows to make a new start with her two reluctant daughters, Jade and Gracie, by returning to Blue Peacock Manor, her childhood home. The memories are not good; her cold, distant mother, a half-sister who mysteriously vanished, and a horrific night years ago when young Sarah was found on the widow's walk, delirious and frightened. A nagging memory of what really happened that fateful evening refuses to surface. She can't forget the rooms she was forbidden to enter or the constant uneasy feeling that permeated her childhood.

But this is home and Sarah needs to bring Blue Manor back to its once stately grandeur and put her fears to rest. Quite a task when Gracie begins to see a shadowy lady in a mist of white, traveling  from room to room. Sarah must face the facts: Blue Manor is haunted, and Gracie does indeed have a gift that enables her to communicate with the spirit world; a spirit that needs to be heard. She herself has seen a fleeting presence. Something evil and sinister happened behind these walls. If only Sarah could remember.

In the meantime, young, innocent teenage girls are disappearing in this small town, and Sarah is deeply worried about her own daughters' safety. There is a sinister, sick mind at work here. Could these troubling occurrences somehow be related to events that happened over ninety years ago?  Perhaps the one man she mistakenly thought she could forget is destined to be her savior. As troubling secrets begin to unravel, Sarah realizes the truth may be more than she can fathom.

There are many characters and plots all intricately woven into one another in this latest novel from Lisa Jackson.  It may take a moment to reread a few passages to solidify the relationship between past to and present. Once you do, it becomes a spooky and absorbing tale.

Just in time for Halloween.....