Rituals

By Mary Anna Evans

"A suspenseful crime story with just a hint of something otherworldly." —Booklist

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, Faye is surrounded by people who talk to the dead on a regular basis. So when influential Spiritualist Tilda Armistead invites Faye and her daughter to commune with the dead, she can't say no. An hour after Tilda's crystal ball shows Faye things no rational mind can explain, Tilda is dead. The evidence says someone trapped Tilda in a small room, nailing its one door shut before setting her house afire. There is no possible way for her to have escaped the blaze, let alone drive for miles before finding Faye and dying in her arms. Yet Tilda did. How? And why?

Anywhere else, these people would be dismissed as crazy. But in Rosebower, "normal" is relative. As Faye watches psychics and charlatans jockey for power, Tilda's sister, Myrna, is slowly dying. Will Rosebower reveal its secrets before more goes up in flames?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sourcebooks
• Release date: Nov 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781615954476

Mary Anna Evans

Mary Anna Evans is the author of the Faye Longchamp archeological mysteries, which have won the Benjamin Franklin Award, the Mississippi Author Award, and three Florida Book Awards bronze medals. The winner of the 2018 Sisters in Crime (SinC) Academic Research Grant, she is an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches fiction and nonfiction writing.

Reviews for Rituals

[bookswoman · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Faye and Amande are working in a small New England town called Rosebower. It is the heart of the Spiritualist movement that happened in the 1920's and still focuses on spiritualist type events like seance, tarot and hoodoo. Faye has been hired to go through the local museum, help get it organized, and make it a more modern museum. Faye and Amande quickly make friends with some of the movers and shakers in town, Tilde the old-guard spiritualist and her sister Myrna are two of the most important.When a fire destroys Tilda's home and she dies from smoke inhalation, Faye is on the hunt to discover just who wanted to kill a basically harmless old lady.There are plenty of twists and turns in this story and a lot of very interesting history, both of which are things that Evans excels at presenting.I love this series and will be watching for the next in the series.