Five Mile House

by Karen Novak

A modern day mystery haunted by a 19th Century ghost.

Eleanor Bly haunts Five Mile House, looking for someone to tell her story to. Jumping from a window to her death in 1889, Eleanor's soul is at unrest until the truth is told about her life and death. She finally finds Leslie, one hundred years later. Leslie bears an uncanny resemblance to Eleanor and is sympathetic if only because of the ghost she carries around herself...

In a moment of temporary insanity, Leslie shoots and kills the suspected perpetrator of a hideous child murder. When evidence is inconclusive, Leslie enters a severe depression and is temporarily institutionalized. When she is released from the hospital, her husband, in an effort to change their environment, takes his family to a small New England town to work on a mysterious restoration project of Five Mile House. It doesn't take long for them to hear about Eleanor, a 19th century madwoman who murdered her seven children in Five Mile House. Leslie becomes obsessed with Eleanor's story, suspecting that the truth may be different from the accepted myth. Wellington, locally known for its coven of wiccan followers, has many secrets of its own.

The stories of both women are told in parallel narratives until they converge at the very end. As frightening as it is suspenseful, Five Mile House is a classic page-turner, a haunted house story and also the story about the lengths a mother will go to in order to protect her children.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Horror, Gothic, Thriller, Fantasy, Paranormal

288 pages, Hardcover

First published October 13, 2000

Reviews

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic, easy to get into ghost story. The cover grabbed me and I was sold on the book before I even knew what it was about.

This is an excellent tale, a unique way of telling a spooky story about an old Victorian home. I was captivated by this story, the characters, the past and the present. It is told from two different perspectives. One from the ghost(which is unique) and one from the new occupants of the home.

I was totally surprised at how the author weaved the story line. Beautifully written. You can never guess how it will all end.

I give this book a 5 stars.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating clarification: 2.5 stars

Two women, separated by 100 years, are on a collision course of fate when the past and present intertwine in the house at the center of it all: Five Mile House.

Leslie Stone has left her job as a New York cop after killing a suspect in a toddler's violent murder. She's haunted by the child, her actions, and her fears of losing her sanity. To combat the stress, her husband, Greg, packs Leslie and their 2 young daughters up and moves to the town of Wellington. There, the couple hopes life will settle down to the normal pace it had prior to Leslie's fateful actions.

However, Leslie becomes absorbed in a mystery from the moment she enters the foyer of Five Mile House, the historic home Greg is busily working on remodeling for the Wellington family. But something isn't right with Five Mile. The windows won't open, there are no fireplaces, and the rooms are a maze of uncomfortable and inexplicable porportions. In addition, the house has seen tragedy on a large scale. Over 100 years ago, legend has it that Eleanor Bly murdered all seven of her children and then jumped from the tower of Five Mile. But did she?

As Leslie becomes more involved in the mystery, her sense of displacement and unease continue, until she finally faces the crux of the problem with Five Mile, and both she and Eleanor find resolution.

Five Mile House certainly wasn't the worst gothic/mystery I've ever read, but it seemed to try too hard to be more then it was. It reminded me of a book by Sarah Waters that I read last year, The Little Stranger. It also wasn't a badly written book, but it just didn't connect with me in any resounding way. Five Mile House is beautifully written, just not well executed, IMO. I felt the plot never made much sense, and the ending was pretty lame and unbelievable.

This is Novak's debut novel, and it's worth a read for those fans of psychological mystery/drama. I'd read another offering of Novak's in the future to see how she's developed as a writer.

[ML Downie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on a gothic crime story.

[Kim Sasso · Rating 3 out of 5]

If there were a "three and a half stars" option I'd go with that for this spooky book. The resolution was a tad unsatisfying, but I enjoyed the ride. I wish I were half as gifted at writing reviews as Karen Novak is at weaving a good tale.

[Michele Cacano · Rating 4 out of 5]

First time reading this author. Very well-written novel that follows a mysterious history through the eyes of an ex-officer who is recuperating from PTSD.

Moving to a new town to get a fresh start, if only temporarily, is a gift. Leslie Stone rests and takes of her two daughters while her husband spends long hours renovating an historical house called Five Mile House.

The house is not only quirky in its construction, but it is the site of a massacre and a suicide. The original family's cursed, it seems, and Leslie gets drawn into the mystery herself.

For the most part, I thought this story was intriguing. I love ghost stories and haunted houses, and there is something very different about this house, and this mysterious history.

[Ron Kerrigan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoy haunted house stories, but this wasn't really all about that. A mixture of psychological history of the main character, Wiccan covens, a might-be-real ancient text controlling the Universe and a ghost don't really add up to a satisfying story for me. And I still had some questions at the end that weren't answered.

Plus the "heroine" was really a jerk in my opinion, an adulteress who neglected her two daughters pretty much to satisfy her own needs.

Not on a par with great ghost stories like The Uninvited, The Haunting of Hill House, The Woman in Black, Hell House, et al.

[Shera Melton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in two sittings. It hooked me and didn't let go. It had a dark, looming cloud over every oart of it that kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering when it was all going to crash. There was action of some sort constantly to advance the plot without giving everything away. For such a short book with a horrible cover, there was so much goodness packed inside. Or should I say, badness. Because this truly was a gothic psychological horror.

[Can Demir · Rating 2 out of 5]

Temposu oldukça düşük bir roman. Geçmişte yaşanmış trajedi kısmını merak ediyorsunuz ama günümüzde geçen ana hikaye çok vasat. (Bir de bir kadının başına kötü bir şey geldiğinde yapacağı ilk şey gidip kocasını aldatmak mı olur? Mesela çocuğunuz kaybolsa... ) Yazarlar bunu sanırım hikayeye renk katmak için yapıyor ama inandırıcılığı öldürüyor.

[NİLGÜN BOZ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gotik korku ögeleri, hayaletli bir malikane ve günümüzde geçen bir polisiye. Sahaf'tan 50 TL'ye aldığım ve şu anda piyasada bulunmayan bir kitaptan beklentim oldukça düşüktü ancak yanıldım. Elimden bırakamadım ve iki günde bitirdim

[Amy Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The plot was fairly labored. The intrigue built in fits and starts rather than a graceful arc. The writing was elegant but not enough to disguise the improbable motivations of the characters.

[Tracy]

Note to self- Apparently I read this but I have no memory of it. According to my Amazon review I didn’t care for it.

[Kathleen Hale · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ghost story of a woman who kills all her children and a town is trying to capture the 'spirit" by rebuilding. The main protaginist looks just like the ghost who will not go away.

[Ariel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I saw this book on a lot of lists for the R.I.P. reading challenge held every year over at Stainless Steel Droppings. My library didn't have a copy which made me want to read it even more. One day I was wandering Goodwill and there it was on the shelf! I thought it was serendipity! On further reflection I should have pondered that there was probably a good reason why the library didn't carry it and that it was cast off to the thrift store. Anyway I saved this book to read for this years R.I.P challenge which champions spooky reads.

In this novel we find disgraced cop and mother Leslie Stone who needs to find a new occupation after she shoots a child molester whose nastiness she has just witnessed in a hotel room. She relocates to Wellington with her two daughters and husband Greg who has just been hired by a wealthy couple to rehab Five Mile House. Leslie is a haunted woman before she even steps foot in Five Mile House but that is where her problems really begin. It turns out that Leslie is a dead ringer for Eleanor Bly, a former occupant of Five Mile House who just happened to murder all of her children there. Or did she? Isabel and Leslie's story intertwine throughout the book until the conclusion which is a bunch of hooey about something called Analecta which is the house itself. What is Analecta you might ask? Okay, hold on tight it's.....the final digit in the never ending number pi. Yes, the big bad scary in Five Mile House is a math equation. If only you know what the final number of pi is you will have achieved ultimate reality and the path to perfection, whatever that is. That is where the book lost me. I expected a least a little horror and spook instead I get a boring math equation. To make matters worse, Leslie is a totally unlikeable character. She carries on an affair like she's doing a load of laundry. Diana, the woman who is having the house remodeled is a pot head who has an unhealthy attachment to her son, as in she insists that they sleep together every night. When I found out what the Analecta was I was so disappointed that I put this book down and didn't pick it up for two weeks. It was through sheer force of will that I finished the last few pages. That never happens to me. The end is usually the most exciting, can't put down part of a book. The most like able part of the book for me was Eleanor's story. Poor Eleanor is being tortured and driven crazy by her cad of a husband and hell spawn sister in law. Now a days a woman could just get a divorce but it is easy to see that in Elanor's time, she didn't have a choice but to stick it out with her psycho family. Eleanor was much more sympathetic than Leslie.

The bottom line is that I went into this book really wanting to like it and was disappointed. Somewhere the story line got off the supernatural track and into I don't know what. Add to that some unlikeable characters that engage in despicable behavior and there is not too much to enjoy here. There are much better haunted house stories out there to spend your time on. Back to Goodwill you go!

[Matt Schiariti · Rating 5 out of 5]

From first page to last I had a hard time putting this book down.

At the center of the novel we have Leslie who's probably one of the most flawed protagonists I've read in recent memory. She's most definetly NOT perfect. She's got her own demons. I could understand her motivations in most instances, but wasn't always thrilled with her decisions. But that makes for a great main character. One that can surprise and disappoint. In other words, one who's human like the rest of us.

A huge life changing event in her past leads her and her family to a town called Wellington where her husband is hired to do work on the 100 year old Five Mile House. Five mile house is the centerpeice of the small toursity town. It's also haunted. Haunted by the ghost of Eleanor. According to the town's local history, Eleanor was a raving mad woman who killed her seven children. Leslie for lack of anything else to do while her husband is consumed on the restoration work gets knee deep in obsession about Eleanor and what really happened at Five Mile House, trying to separate the truth from local ghost stories.

I enjoyed the parallels between Eleanor's story from 100 years ago to the course Leslie's life takes throughout the course of the book.

What kept me turning the pages was the desire to find out more and more about what happened in Five Mile House leading up to Eleanor's death and inevitable haunting. Without going into too many details I can say that this is a very well woven plot element that is revealed slowly but surely over the course of the book and it's most definetly not what it seems on the surface. This element as well as Leslie's and Eleanor's eerily similar life's paths make this one I couldn't put down.

This book is like an amalgamation between a crime thriller and a ghost story and it's pulled off VERY well. While there's some closer at the very end of the book I was still left wondering what would happen to some of the main players. I've come to find out that one of Novak's latest novels features certain characters from this one and I'll definetly be reading that as well as any other books she writes.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I am Eleanor, and I, like this house, am haunted.” So opens Five Mile House. Former detective Leslie Stone is also a haunted woman, plagued by her memories of countless child abduction/murder cases and of the perp she shot down in cold blood. She also sees the ghost of the little girl that he killed. Hospitalized for months for a complete emotional breakdown, she finally returns home to a family which, at best, treats her with wariness. Her husband Greg has accepted a restoration job in the remote little town of Wellington, thinking that a brand new start will do them all a world of good. But Wellington is a very strange place, and from the first few days, Leslie knows something’s amiss; she may not be police anymore, but her skills and instincts are as sharp as ever. In a matter of days, she discovers that a century ago, Eleanor Bly murdered her all of her children at the mansion, before leaping out the tower window. Gwen, the local woman married to Greg’s assistant, befriends Leslie, and tries to recruit her into her Wiccan lifestyle. The town’s only business is a concrete recycling plant, which is run by a coven that has kicked Gwen out. Worst of all, Leslie views a portrait of Eleanor and is horrified to realize that she looks exactly like her. Is that why the Wellington’s hired her husband?

Five Mile House chronicles the inner turmoil of two women who have been broken by some pretty devastating circumstances. Parts of the narrative are delivered in Eleanor’s own voice, while Leslie’s is related in the third person. It is fascinating to watch how their two individual stories come to parallel each other, although that actualization doesn’t dawn until midway through the book. Eleanor at one point comments that Leslie isn’t aware of her presence because she is distracted by her own ghosts and demons. But she hopes that Leslie will vanquish and lay to rest the evil that resides in the very timbers of Five Mile House. The final chapters are loaded with frenzied suspense as the fates of these two women resolve themselves. Not all hauntings are supernatural.

This is a fine debut novel that prompts me to pick up Ms. Novak’s subsequent books.

[Lorraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Karen Novak does not write ordinary mysteries. Instead, she has almost invented a new genre: the literary gothic, the literay mystery, not sure what to call it, but damn her sentences are gorgeous, and her plots are labyrinthine.

Leslie Stone is a Child Protective Services worker who works with an urban police department. One hot, oh-so-hot summer, there are a rash of child killings. Leslie feels herself beginning to disintegrate under the stress of the heat, her fear for her own daughters, the crumbling at the edges of her marriage, and her terror, every day, that there will be yet another dead child's story to investigate when she arrives at work.

On her way to work one day, she sees a little blonde girl who appears to be lost on the subway. The girl disappears before she can help, and when she arrives at work, it is to find that they have been called out to another of the dreaded calls. The victim? The same child that Leslie has just seen. When the suspect is arrested within a few hours, Leslie Stone snaps, and in his holding cell, she shoots the suspect dead.

The story picks up months later, in the small village that her husband and her children have moved to in an effort to help Leslie heal her fractured mind. But it seems that all those ghosts have found someone they can talk to.

What's most interesting now about the Leslie Stone novels (which continue with Innocence and The Wilderness) is that Karen was doing "Medium" or "Ghost Whisperer" long before those shows came to television. If one didn't know better, one might think that the writers for those shows were fans of Karen's. But Karen is a magnificent writer, and I say, go read the books.

[Bezalel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad book. I don't like crime novels, but I do like supernatural themes, and this book handled both fairly well. From what I understand, this is the first novel by Karen Novak, and as such, is considerably polished.

The story moved along quite nicely, only faltering in a couple of places where the author used such abrupt changes in points of view that I actually thought there might have been a page or two missing from my copy of the book. I actually checked the page numbers to make sure everything was where it should be. I noticed the jarring skips seemed most evident at the beginning of a new page, and were problematic because the author did not indent new paragraphs. The flow of one point of view at the end of a page into a new point of view at the beginning of the next page, without indentions, was confusing and jarring. However, once I figured this out, the story continued to a satisfying, but not spectacular, end. Overall, I say "meh."

[Therese · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for a haunted house. This was so much more than just a haunted house. Yes yes, there is a ghost, Eleanor, floating around the old weird box-like, incongruently built Five Mile House, where she killed her own six children before jumping to her death. Yes there's a coven of brassy witches up the road who run a cement business. Yes there is a cop/mom who sees one too many dead children and snaps and yes she looks just LIKE Eleanor. And that sweet neighbor who keeps miscarrying, but was her death really suicide? That would all be enough to keep you reading, but Novak goes one crazy awesome step further.

It's not just a house. It's not just a cement business. She didn't just commit suicide. There is a quest for a power so fearful, so omnipotent, that you can hardly believe it can fit on the pages of this little ghost story, but it does, very satisfactorily.

[BookAddict · Rating 5 out of 5]

Karen Novak's Leslie Stone series which starts with "Five Mile House," focuses on missing children mysteries and as a "detective series" are really in a class by themselves. Leslie Stone is a child abuse specialist and so this series deals with difficult subject matter. There is also a supernatural component to these with Five Mile House narrated largely by a ghost. In ways, these feel more gothic novel in nature and finding a modern comparison is, for me, quite impossible. Needless to say, this is another series of books that appeals to my love of complex, dark, and moody tales, although the subject matter may make these tough for some.

[Geoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

My mom got an Advanced Readers Copy of this book years ago when she was working for an e-commerce company. I started reading it in high school, but had to put it down because of homework. Last time I was at my parents' house, I made sure to grab it so I could finally finish reading it.

Honestly, I really enjoyed it. I liked the dual narratives, and the story itself is rather intriguing. Parts of the book were a bit dense stylistically, but it worked for this story.

If you are okay with a bit of supernatural, I'd recommend it.

[T · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting premise that took too many wrong turns. It never really seemed to find its 'voice' (as it were) and I found myself contemplating giving up on it at least 3 times.

However, the one bright spot of this was the very conflicted main character of Leslie Stone. Were it not for me empathizing with her, I probably would have put this back on the shelf -- or straight in the donate-to-the-library pile.

Not really recommended.

[Naomi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know for a fact now that I have read this book before and it didn't impress me the last time either. Really a boring ghost story. It isn't really scary. Just your typical haunted house book..of ghost dies a pretty nasty death and doesn't take it well and targets the female member of the household...that is it!

[Paula · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is an amazing amount of plot in this 200-page novel. She managed to build the character and do an intricate ghost/crime/Da Vinci Code-type plot in such a short while. The only thing I didn't like is that the main character paid absolutely no attention to children for the whole book, even though all of her actions were supposed to be based on protecting them....odd.

[Erika Nerdypants · Rating 2 out of 5]

A sort of modern gothic tale. leslie Stone, a detective who has just shot a child killer, is moved into the country by her husband, where strange things begin happening. This novel was well written, despite the fact that I didn;t care for the plot at all. I still enjoyed it because of Novak's writing style.

[Kelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

The one thing this book did have going for it was the twists and turns. I never knew what to expect and I like that. Not only that but Karen Novak had a way of bringing most of all those winding twisting roads to a head. It didn't spine-tingle as much as I'd hoped for and it made me ask a lot of questions that weren't necessarily ever answered but overall I was pretty-well satisfied.

[KimberlyDawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

All in all a good book. It touches on witchcraft-which I didn't expect. The author draws you in by connecting you with the main character. There seems to be a little too much going on and the connection isn't always quite clear. The ending is pretty generic but a good read overall.

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

My rating would actually be between 3 and 4 stars. I liked the story of the two women, but the reason for all the mayhem didn't make sense to me - probably because when I reached those parts, my eyes glazed over a little and I didn't read as carefully as I should have.

[Sangeeta · Rating 1 out of 5]

one of the WORST books i've ever read. she took a potentially interesting storyline and mucked it up with a remarkably unsympathetic protagonist, silly meandering, and loose ends. yuk. what a waste of time.

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just had to read one ghost story prior to Halloween.
This book was it.

It was different and the ending didn't come out quite like I preferred, but it fulfilled my need for a ghost story this Halloween season.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few points in the book threw me off, but everything led together at the end. I haven't read too many books switching between views in this manner. The style and ideas of the story left an impression on me.