Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Ghost Thrillers

  • The MADWOMAN of PREACHER’S COVE by Joy Ross Davis – Paranormal Ghost Thrillers, Occult Fiction, Witch/Wizard Thrillers

    The MADWOMAN of PREACHER’S COVE by Joy Ross Davis – Paranormal Ghost Thrillers, Occult Fiction, Witch/Wizard Thrillers

    A Gold and Blue Badge that reads: Paranormal Supernatural Fiction 2018 Grand Prize The Madwoman of Preacher's Cove Joy Ross DavidAward-winning author, Joy Ross Davis’ latest work, The Madwoman of Preacher’s Cove, ventures beyond the paranormal into the surreal. Like Medusa on a bad hair day, the lives of characters are intertwined and twisted in a snaky snarl of conflicting human desires, terrifying inexplicable events, and the lingering afterlives of ancient, supernatural beings.

    Davis gifts us with a 21st-century legend, replete with mythological themes and creatures, and snippets of folklore and superstition melded with documented vagaries of weather, obscure herpetology, and creates a mystical potion worthy of Circe. In other words, Davis gives us a thrilling read!

    Rumors about suspicious deaths have put Preacher’s Cove, Alabama, a small, historic town notorious for powerful, killer storms, on the map. Hap Murray, Huntsville’s Channel 12 field reporter, with family ties to the Cove, arrives in town on assignment, armed with only limited knowledge of the town’s history of inexplicable deaths. The rumors speculate that the local pastor may be involved.

    Hap meets the beautiful, provocative owner of Cove’s Inn, Libby Arbuckle, when he first arrives. She is a woman with many secrets—a woman with a history. When Libby, along with Chief of Police Riggs, join Hap in the search for the truth, their ensuing relationship proves integral to Hap’s investigation.

    During his stay, Hap experiences supernatural events that sometimes make him question his sanity, and he already has issues. Like PTSD, he is plagued by periodic, severe headaches accompanied by fragmented, bizarre visual and auditory hallucinations along with phatomasia, he smells things that are not there, which renders him anxious, fearful, and confused. These are never far from his mind, along with the guilt he feels over losing the love of his life and their child through his own failure to act.

    Little does Hap know that the affliction and emotional angst he experiences are pieces of the puzzle he’s challenged to solve. Or, that when Preacher’s Cove welcomes him, a chain of events are triggered that change the shape of residents’ lives forever, in ways that no one could ever predict.

    Joy Ross Davis has crafted an eerie, twisted plot where reality is warped—slightly out of focus, keeping the reader off-balance and engaged. The Madwoman of Preacher’s Cove satisfies dreamers’ needs for a taste of magic, the desire for good to triumph over evil, and the reassurance of a benevolent all-powerful being that is always available.

    The Madwoman of Preacher’s Cove won Grand Prize in the CIBAs for Paranormal Fiction.

  • BLOOD on the CHESAPEAKE by Randy Overbeck – Paranormal, Crime Thriller, Ghost Mystery/Suspense

    BLOOD on the CHESAPEAKE by Randy Overbeck – Paranormal, Crime Thriller, Ghost Mystery/Suspense

    Once upon a time, Darrell Henshaw saw dead people. Or rather, one specific dead person: his uncle. When Darrell was just 13, Dead Uncle Ed sat on the end of his bed and warned him not to go joyriding with his brother the next day – and not to let his brother go, either. Darrell only half-believed in ghosts in general or Ed in particular, so he only half-paid attention to that warning. Darrell didn’t go, his brother did, and his brother lost some toes to hypothermia and his chance to play varsity sports.

    Darrell is an adult now and has been for a while. He’s also the new football coach and history teacher, at crumbling Williams High School in the very tiny town of Wilshire, Maryland. He believes it’s his job to bring a high school championship to the school in its final year in its old building. But the ghost that haunts the halls of Williams High School has other plans for the new coach. Ghost-sensitive Darrell is the spirit’s one last chance at revenge before the walls of the place where he was murdered come tumbling down.

    Blood on the Chesapeake is, first and foremost, a ghost story. Darrell is haunted by the ghost of a young black man, just as the entire school has been for over 50 years. The ghost moves objects in Darrell’s office, operates the staff copy machine, and generally appears all over the school, but most frequently in Darrell’s office and the widow’s walk outside his window, the place where the young man supposedly hanged himself. But there are also plenty of people who hint that there is more to the story, and it’s that search for more that drives Darrell to uncover the truth, through a search of primary sources and historical records that is both fascinating and meticulous at the same time. In that search, readers will experience both the joy of discovery and the despair of what is revealed. It seems that some things are even worse than imagined.

    The truth that Darrell unearths is one that the entire town has shrouded in a cloak of silence – and shame. After all, even in the early 1960s, lynchings were terrible things that happened in rural areas of the Deep South, not in suburban Maryland.

    As Darrell dives deeply into history, the real history, he learns that it happened there and that the attitudes and beliefs that caused that young man’s death are alive and well – as are the men responsible for that death. Men who will do anything to protect themselves. After all, they’ve already committed one murder. Why not more?

    While the hauntings of the high school and its coach are certainly the chilling stuff of which nightmares are made, it’s the truth that Darrell uncovers that is the real terror. Terrible things could happen there – and did happen there. And they were covered up there because history is written by the victors. In this case, the survivors and the victims have no voice.

    Blood on the Chesapeake is a haunting story about the lengths and depths that one man will go to finish his unfinished business. If revenge is a dish best served cold, this time that revenge is served with the chill of the grave.