More Than You Know by Beth Gutcheon

More Than You Know is a novel that lies somewhere between a ghost story and a romance.  In the small coastal town of Dundee, Maine sits an old home referred to as "the Schoolhouse."  This building was once a schoolhouse on the nearby Beal Island and was moved to the mainland by an enterprising man who intended to rent the house to vacationers in the summer months.  Though he attempted several times, the families who had come to stay left almost immediately after arriving; demanding their money back without saying why.

The book is told in two parts: from the point of view of an elderly woman looking back on the summer she met the love of her life and as historical blurbs from a family who lives on Beal Island. We see flashbacks to the life of Claris Haskell- a woman stuck in an unhappy marriage, bound to a lonely life on Beal island away from her family. You learn about young Hannah, a teenager from Boston, who is staying with her half brother and reproving stepmother in the Schoolhouse for the summer.  She falls in love with local badboy Conary Crocker and the two soon find that they have more than just a mutual attraction- they can both see the malevolent spirit that haunts the Schoolhouse and Beal Island.  Soon Hannah discovers that a grisly murder was committed on Beal Island and was blamed on Haskell's daughter.  Could this murder be connected to the apparitions Hannah and Conary keep experiencing?

More Than You Know is the perfect creepy read for a dark October night.

Bird Skinner by Alice Greenaway

Jim Kennoway is a curmudgeon, an angry seventy year old loner. In the summer of 1973, after losing a leg to disease and unhealthy living, he decides to live alone at his family’s beach house on Fox Island off the coast of Maine. Here his lack of mobility and heavy drinking make him even angrier. He relishes a solitary life until August when a young woman from the Solomon Islands arrives for a visit. Cadillac is the daughter of Tosca Baketi, who was Jim’s native scout and guide when he fought in the South Pacific during World War II. She is on her way to study at Yale’s medical school. A state department agency has decided she should spend a month with Jim to get accustomed to life in the United States. Jim, who was unaware of her existence and never really thought of Tosca since the war, is not happy about her presence. Sensing and respecting his aversion to company, she keeps her distance. He does his best to be hospitable. Over the course of time he comes to like and admire Cadillac. He also mulls over his life story, not just the time spent with Tosca during the war but also his childhood, marriage and academic career studying birds. All his life Jim had been a loner and passionate about his likes and dislikes. He had been a world traveler, familiar with Southeast Asia and the islands of the South Pacific before the onset of the war. But now, having lost his wife, his leg and his profession, his world has shrunk to Fox Island. His likes have narrowed to liquor, cigarettes, birds, Hemingway and Treasure Island. Human nature is complicated. Cadillac, descended from headhunters and cannibals, is sweet-natured and accommodating. Jim, whose father was a doctor and grandfather an industrialist, has been cruel and even savage during his lifetime. Bird Skinner by Alice Greenaway examines the emotional lives of people caught in the web of history and their own weaknesses. 

Check out The Bird Skinner @ the library!

Death of a Dyer by Eleanor Kuhns

The sequel to A Simple Murder finds the main character, Will Rees, back on his farm in Maine. From the previous novel, Will is still working on reconciling with his son, David, and sorting out his feelings for Lydia, a woman from a Shaker community.  Will also has to deal with his need to travel and was born under “a traveling quilt.” His farm and hometown hold good and bad memories for him. When he is back, his boyhood friend is murdered. The son of the murdered man is under suspicion and the widow asks Will to investigate the matter. The author evokes the setting of post-Revolutionary War America and the hardships and joys of that time. Will Rees is a strong, morally upright man trying to navigate his time and character that I hope will continue. Though it is a sequel, this novel can also be enjoyed without reading the prior book.

Check out Death of a Dyer @ the library!