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The invited
2019
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Library Journal Review
Helen and Nate Wetherell attempt to escape their dull lives by moving to a village in Vermont, where they will build their dream home. It's even more alluring that the adjacent bog holds stories of hauntings. Helen, a historian, collects artifacts from the town's past and builds them into the house-a beam hewn from the tree used to hang Hattie Breckenridge for witchcraft in 1924, blackened bricks from a deadly fire, a carved maple mantel. She soon realizes the objects "remember" and reveal secrets of the Breckenridge family. Young neighbor Olive Kissner and her mother knew they could find Hattie's treasure, hidden in the bog 100 years earlier. When her mother leaves town mysteriously, Olive continues the search alone. Since Helen and Nate now own the bog, she decides to scare them away and quickly discovers that her own family's secrets are strangely connected to -Hattie. Will Helen's home be the in-between meeting place for the dead and the living? And will Olive uncover the treasure and the key to her mother's disappearance? VERDICT The latest from McMahon (Burntown) is like a nesting doll-a thriller inside a murder mystery inside a ghost story-and will chill readers with every sideways glimpse of a passing shadow.-K.L. Romo, Duncanville, TX © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
In this powerful supernatural thriller from bestseller McMahon (Burntown), history teacher Helen Wetherell and her husband, Nate, buy 44 acres in rural Vermont on which to build their dream house, land the locals believe to be cursed by the spirit of Hattie Breckenridge, who was hanged there a century earlier as a witch. Days after the young do-it-yourselfers move into a trailer on the property, they find an ominous bundle containing an animal's tooth on the doorstep-and that's just the first of a series of events intended to scare them into leaving. Subsequently, Nate, a science teacher who scoffs at the supernatural, catches their 14-year-old neighbor, Olive Kissner, made up like a ghost, trespassing. But it quickly becomes clear the feisty teen isn't responsible for everything. As Helen draws closer to Olive, she gleans more about the legends surrounding Hattie, which include the treasure the doomed woman supposedly buried on the property. Whether one believes in ghosts, McMahon's consummately crafted chiller is guaranteed to haunt. Agent: Daniel Lazar, Writers House. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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