9. Conversion - Katherine Howe

library book
2014, G. P. Putnam's Sons
402 pgs.
YA CRFish/HF/flip flopping back and forth....
Finished 2/13/16
Goodreads rating: 3.34
My rating:4
Setting:Contemporary Danvers, Massachusetts and 1706 Salem Village, Massachusetts (the same town)

First line/s: "How long must I wait?  His tongue creeps out the corner of his mouth while he writes, the tip of it black with ink, the blacking in his gums staining his teeth.  He looks like he's got a mouthful of tar.  I've been waiting for some time, but Reverend Green's still writing.  His quill runs across the paper, scratching like mouse paws.  Scratch, scratch, dip, scratch, lick, scratch."

My comments:  I chose this book for my YA book group to read because I'd read another by Howe, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, and enjoyed it.  This one took place in the same area of Massachusetts - Danvers, which was originally know as "Salem Village."  Yup, that Salem.  The story goes back and forth between the confession of one of the Salem girls who precipitated the witch hysteria in 1692 and a high school senior in contemporary Danvers.  I've recently read The Crucible - which was a good thing in that I knew much of the story but a bad thing in that I didn't really want to go over through the whole ordeal again.  The contemporary part of the story really kept me reading and anticipating.  This was a good mystery, great characters, and even believable in some of the unbelievable places!

Goodreads synopsis:  From the New York Times bestselling author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane comes a chilling mystery—Prep meets The Crucible. 
           It’s senior year at St. Joan’s Academy, and school is a pressure cooker. College applications, the battle for valedictorian, deciphering boys’ texts: Through it all, Colleen Rowley and her friends are expected to keep it together. Until they can’t.
           First it’s the school’s queen bee, Clara Rutherford, who suddenly falls into uncontrollable tics in the middle of class. Her mystery illness quickly spreads to her closest clique of friends, then more students and symptoms follow: seizures, hair loss, violent coughing fits. St. Joan’s buzzes with rumor; rumor blossoms into full-blown panic.
           Soon the media descends on Danvers, Massachusetts, as everyone scrambles to find something, or someone, to blame. Pollution? Stress? Or are the girls faking? Only Colleen—who’s been reading The Crucible for extra credit—comes to realize what nobody else has: Danvers was once Salem Village, where another group of girls suffered from a similarly bizarre epidemic three centuries ago . . .
           Inspired by true events—from seventeenth-century colonial life to the halls of a modern-day high school—Conversion casts a spell. With her signature wit and passion, New York Times bestselling author Katherine Howe delivers an exciting and suspenseful novel, a chilling mystery that raises the question, what’s really happening to the girls at St. Joan’s

7. Deadly Harvest - Heather Graham

There are supposedly three books, each about a different PI brother....This is Flynn Brothers #2

Audio read by Phil Gigante

9 unabridged discs/ 10:28

2008, Brilliance Audio

385 pgs.

Finished 1/28/2014

Adult Murder Mystery

Goodreads Rating: 3.96 (Whaaaaa?)

My Rating:  1/Didn't like it at all -  actually, it was painful .....

TPPL

Setting: Contemporary Salem, Massachusetts

My comments:  Yuck.  I always hate writing a negative review, it makes me feel so badly for the author.  But this book really stunk.  Predictable, repetitious, boring dialogue, stereotypical relationships, characters that could be interchangeable, a head-scratching inclusion of the sort-of-supernatural....and a depiction of the city of contemporary Salem, Massachusetts that is completely misleading.  Top that off with an audio reading that gives the characters crazy southern accents and I'm left cringing.  I can't believe I finished it.  Yuck.  Again.  No more Heather Graham for me.  Just not my cuppa tea.

Goodreads:  When a young woman is found dead in a field, dressed up as a scarecrow with a slashed grin and a broken neck, the residents of Salem, Massachusetts, begin to fear that the infamous Harvest Man is more than just a rumor. But out-of-town cop Jeremy Flynn doesn't have time for ghost stories. He's in town on another investigation, looking for a friend's wife, who mysteriously vanished in a cemetery.  

     Complicating his efforts is local occult expert Rowenna Cavanaugh, who launches her own investigation, convinced that a horror from the past has crept into the present and is seducing women to their deaths. Jeremy uses logic and solid police work. Rowenna depends on intuition. But they both have the same goal: to stop the abductions and locate the missing women before Rowenna herself falls prey to the Harvest Man's dark seduction.

35. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane - Katherine Howe

For: Adults
Hyperion, 2009
371 pgs.
$25.99
Rating: 4 Liked it a lot
Endpapers: In cursive text, a recipe to end "man's mortal suffering." (understood more after reading the book)

"Just because you don't believe in something doesn't mean it isn't real." This is a quote in the book that I keep thinking of.

Harvard grad student Connie Goodwin is looking for her dissertation topic in American colonial studies. Her advisor, Manning Chilton, a prominent historian, is hounding her to get going. But Connie's hippie mother, Grace, has called from Santa Fe to see if Connie will spend the summer cleaning out her dead grandmother, Sophia's, old house in Marblehead so that it can be sold. Abandoned for over twenty years, the ancient place is overgrown, unelectrified, and fascinating. On her first night in the old house, she finds an old key in an ancient family Bible that contains the name Deliverance Dane. Trying to discover some background on this Puritan name, shy Connie meets a like-minded steeplejack named Sam, and together they start hunting for clues.

The story takes place in 1991 and during the time of the Salem witch trials. I think it was set in 1991 because the author wanted our protagonist to really research, hunting through documents, libraries, churches, graveyards, museums, for information instead of sitting down at a computer. It works. It's a great story that I didn't want to put down. Read it on the plane flight back and forth to PA last weekend, and the time flew.

SPOILER: My only tiny negative comment would be about the character development of Manning Chilton. You know right from the beginning what he's all about, and it would be nice to have had this introduced slowly....I like to not guess the ending or the culprit untilt the story advances a little more. Oh well. This was minor.

A wonderful summer read. Especially after The Lace Reader, which also takes place in the Salem area, an area I'm somewhat familiar with, which adds an extra bit of fun. Now I really want to go check out the older parts of Marblehead!

15. The Lace Reader - Brunonia Barry

AUDIO read by Alyssa Bresnahan (she was great)
For: Adults
Book Pub: 2008
Audio: 10 discs/11.5 hours
400 pgs.
Rating: 4.5
Finished: Mar. 5, 2009
"You have to go back to go forward."

Now this was one interesting story. Confusing. Fascinating. Great setting. You knew there'd be a surprise at the end. There was. I think it was this author's first, which is quite commendable. I did not rate this a 5 because it was a little too depressing, overall, I felt I needed to knock off a half point for that.

There are five parts in this book, and much of it is told in the first person by the protagonist, Towner Whitney. She has returned home from California after 15 years to look into the disappearance of her beloved Aunt, Eva. Eva lives in an old mansion on the shore in the center of Salem, Massachusetts, where she runs a tearoom, keeps a huge garden, speaks in proverbs, and swims most every day, even at 85. Oh yes, she reads lace, telling fortunes to all who ask. Towner is fifth generation "reader", and her sensitivity - along with abuse, force her at age 17 into a mental hospital for drug and shock treatment. She left everything behind for fifteen years, but now comes home and has to confront it all. Witches and covens, Calvinists and modern day Puritans, boating and islands, lace-making and abuse shelters, even red-hat ladies and references to 17th century Salem witches careen through this story at a break-neck pace. There's old love and new love, cops and drunks, tourists and townies. It's a good story, all twisting and turning and keeping you on your toes, wondering what's true and what's not. You know a lot is not true, because Towner begins her tale telling us that she is a liar, that she very rarely tells the truth.

I went on to Brunonia Barry's website, and she says that this is written as a hero's journey for women, which is different than a male's hero journey. Many women are need to help this journey happen.

"Every gift has a price. Every piece of lace has a secret." This read was fascinating and thought-provoking. I knitted like crazy as I listened, sneezed, and blew my nose.