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This wouldn't be my chosen treatise but Phyllis A. Whitney has swept me along, all the way to eighty-two pages! Unusual for not being a mystery, it is about a girl not only accepting a step-family when her widowed Mom marries in her hometown but a seventeen/eighteen year-old sad to leave New York City. I have taken up reading my many Phyllis oeuvres on hand, in their publishing order and so here we go... with 1950!

Halfway through: I am so moved by a personal glimpse shared fleetingly, that I am attempting to write to Leslie. She didn't say if her stay in a friend's wooded lot was a cottage or tent but 3 of her cats were suddenly gone. Because my love is the same, it struck me with hollowness in my stomach that is still there, that she equals her cats to any family member. 10 years later I can guess losing 3 kids was agony!

This is very well done, as I thought it would be.

I loved Leslie's first book and know there is no way for her to be dry because they aren't about reporting research findings like most haunting compilations. She puts herself into the book: it is about her visiting these places, interviewing people in the know; sometimes her intuitive impressions, or others who checked these places. She feels for victims and families and sometimes images how they must have felt.

I don't see this independent story getting more than three stars and hope nothing induces fewer. It never lags but is a fast pace the same as quality plotting? It seems to do nothing but jump from one possible ghost sighting, to someone repeating that she couldn't have seen such a thing. I like her closeness with Jim but the doctor's whining insinuation that it is disloyal to the household to like him is immature.

This is a book that children & adults both must read! Through the first half I floated, smiling at the incredibly beautiful coloured art scenes. All the rest of the way, I teared-up over the power of the story's events and words. SHOWING people the right way to live and think, on a journey like this, is most convincing! I wish we could always do this, instead explaining right from wrong and hoping that will work.

This novel does not waste time getting aiming for the point. An independent New Yorker is urged to live, in Spain, with an outrageously wealthy Grandfather who regrets disinheriting her parents. Despite being 1973 his obsession that no one turn mentally ill is off-putting but that's nothing to having an ex-nazi business assistant: living in his villa! Are spirits a ploy to indicate madness or is there a haunting?

I have been focused on Thanksgiving house-cleaning, garden and flower-picking (Ron did the cooking and baking). We are also protecting all of our beautiful, bright, colourful plants from tonight's possible first frost. Book review catch-up was my other effort. Last night, I finally resumed this novel and think we'll get into the groove of this Spanish mystery in a few pages. I hope the ghosts are real, not ploys.

This isn't good writing, especially the dialogue. It has the woodenness of amateur acting. There are astute observations. The protagonist is intelligent and secure. We have introduced the subject of possible ghosts. Some genres, like my beloved gothic mysteries (and "cozy" mysteries suffer most), don't have quality writing as dominant traits. There is A LOT of gifted gothic writing but a few are for the ghosts!

Supposedly a prolific gothic mystery-writing Canadian author, about whom I had not heard. One of several males who used female pseudonyms. I guess they think women are the buyers who prefer gothic mystery. I would love to ask: if men prefer other genres, why weren't they writing that? Were they writing to please particular women, or did these men author gothic mystery because they favoured it too, as a minority?

Amazingly I got past 450 pages, skipping merely a few extraneous blathering spots thrice at most, throughout all. I was closest than ever before to bailing on a book, at under 100 pages. I fought forward, skipped that bit, and reached the spot most books thankfully have. The action is built enough that I want to proceed AND I have read far enough that I am invested and not finishing would become the greater waste.

I freed myself to skim pages of autopsy detail, driving directions, repetitive musing, and Kathy's surely untrained indulgence in filler overall but am surprised to reach page 300. The nuisance is that this would be the closing of most fiction. 532 not due to a stellar story but filler! I saw 1 novel at a discount years ago, discovered prequels were required, and my collecting habit gathered 13! They're for sale!

I'll try a bit more but am leaning towards bailing; an undesirable decision because I never have. I own 13 of Kathy's novels and would like to finish 1! However 500+ of violence and gruesome science, even though this is an exercise to tolerate that stuff, is a lot to ask when Kathy's narrative is excessively wordy too. If anyone replies that there's sexual assault described in this book, I'll discard it for sure.

I made a dent. At the normal 300-page size I would finish. Due to first book "learning to curb unneeded musings" (I hope), it has 500. Excess description. I'm trying to thicken skin and read the grotesque type I avoid but there's too much else I dislike. I might bail, which I have NEVER done. There's an alternative! I'm going to skim but refuse sexual assault crime. Please forewarn me if Kathy describes that!

As I swept into fellow-Canadian Louise Penny's 2nd volume, very order-dependent: I observed 3 things. I don't own 3 & 4. I must procure them. I read novel 1 "Still Life" will be a movie! I did say it has the makings for it, bravo! Lastly: the Quebecois keep calling -10 C "bitterly", "dangerously" cold. This mystery actually hinges on why someone took off gloves in "weather like this". -10 C is not very cold!

Cindy Sprigg so kindly offered this and one other story to me in December 2013 and I was very eager to savour both. I only got to this one and admittedly I didn't understand it. I must reread it to get the crux properly, as well as read the ghost story I excitedly saved. I will review both of them and list them at my blog. Cindy has awaited my feedback and I will eagerly give it soon! I appreciate having these.

Reviewers say this is a murder mystery and isn't going to be paranormal. That's a shame because readers choosing titles like this are after mystical stories. It is fast-paced so far and I know Joan Lowery Nixon to write well and to be highly memorable from my teen years. Her stuff sticks with you so I'll enjoy the type for what it is; forewarned it might not contain spirits, with which I wanted to be entertained.

A tip I hope Patricia Cornwell practiced in all her writing since this first novel: mention atrocities once. Details of an atrocity once was hard enough to forget. Describing them again, with increased disturbing detail if that were possible, was awful and very much inappropriate to repeat. It served no purpose. The deeds were bad: we believed the protagonist the first time. The next novel can only be better.

I thought this was a book of old-fashioned, young-aged riddles. Ron & I like a laugh and I have a toddler niece and baby nephew coming long-distance to visit next month! I suppose it's ever better than miscellaneous book that this is a bona fide story. Much too silly and too young even for us but fine for tiny children. I loved learning Lisl Weil is from Vienna, Austria and lived 96 years! Like many authoresses!

I can't wait until this book is over because it is a gruesome topic to read, the crime and Kay Scarpetta's job. This is why I was reluctant to read this series for years but am giving it a chance, from this first novel. Thank goodness it is fictional. This is awful and never the subject I have anything to do with in entertainment, films or novels. The other crimes have to be less despicable.

Most whined "Hornet's Nest" isn't as good as this but I loved the writing from page one and the adventure. Now that I try the great Kay Scarpetta so raved about, I'm finding the contents disgustingly, disturbingly unpleasant and not digging the writing either. Already pet peeve #1, anyone whistling (even worse, via teeth!!!) was committed!!! No one whistles in reaction anything in real life! I hate that gimmick!

All of Kay Hooper's characters are distinct personages we can picture and know how we would take to them. Most are highly likeable, which makes the progression of this book a pleasure. Even when some are authoritative and secretive, none are crisply curt like in stereotypical novel-writing. We slowly acquaint each as we would in real life. Sympathy and connectivity build. Fast romance might yield an explanation.

You know you're reading an adult book instead of those reduced "cozy" offshoots when there is straightforward unabashed sex! Also a full-fledged standard mystery like this delves far enough into creativity for a complex, ethereal plot like the one slowly building here. We still have not done more than hint at it through research as of 72% through. I can't wait until we uncover the magical concept awaiting readers.