Rituals (e-book) (used book) | Mary Anna Evans | bookbook.eu

Description

Faye Longchamp doesn’t believe in ghosts, but she’s an archaeologist.  Dead people are her life.   While working in Rosebower, a rural New York town founded by Spiritualists, she’s surrounded by people who talk to the dead on a regular basis.  When the most influential Spiritualist in town, Tilda Armistead, invites Faye and her daughter to commune with the dead, she can’t say no.  Curiosity, too, is a cherished part of an archaeologist’s life.  An hour after her crystal ball shows Faye things no rational mind can explain, Tilda is dead. The evidence says that someone trapped Tilda in a small room, nailing its one door short before setting her house afire.  There is no possible way for her to have escaped and driven many miles, only to die in Faye’s arms.  Yet she did. In this bizarre place where it is sacrilegious not to believe in spooks, Faye is surrounded by people who had reason to kill Tilda.  Her estranged daughter is the heir to the Armistead fortune.  That daughter’s husband is a stage magician with a long history of making things vanish, and he’s almost too good-looking to be trusted.  A rich developer would like to turn Rosebower into a Disneyland with real ghosts, and Tilda had fought him with her considerable political clout.  And then there is the famed root doctor whose mysterious herbal potions are consumed by everybody in town. Anywhere else, these people would be dismissed as crazy.  In Rosebower, “normal” is relative.  As Faye watches the psychics and charlatans jockey for power, Tilda’s sister, Myrna, is slowly fading away.  There’s no reason for her to be dying.  She just is. Faye’s work takes her deeper into the Armisteads history, revealing artifacts that they would prefer to keep hidden.  Can she find out the truth before Rosebower and its secrets go up in flames?