The Seeker: A Novel - Hardcover

Chesterton, R. B.; Haines, Carolyn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1605985007 ISBN 13: 9781605985008

Publisher: Pegasus Books, 2014

Synopsis

A young graduate student travels to Walden Pond expecting to find inspiration in the quiet solitude but finds something eerie and malevolent living deliberately in Thoreau’s woods.

When graduate student Aine Cahill uncovers a journal proving that her aunt Bonnie was an intimate companion of Henry David Thoreau’s during his supposedly solitary sojourn at Walden Pond, she knows that she has found the perfect subject for her dissertation.

She decides to travel to Walden Pond herself to hunker down and work on her writing, but it quickly becomes clear that all is not as it seems in Thoreau’s woodland retreat. The further Aine delves into Bonnie’s diary the more she finds herself wondering about her family’s sinister legacy and even her own sanity―is there really a young girl lurking in the woods?

As tragedy strikes a nearby town and suspicion falls on Aine, she scrambles to find the truth behind Thoreau’s paradise.

About this title

About the Author

R. B. Chesterton is the pseudonym for Carolyn Haines. She is 2010 recipient of the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Writing, the 2009 recipient of the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, and she was recently awarded the 2011 RT Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Amateur Sleuth. She is the author of dozens of books in a number of genres, including The Darkling, published by Pegasus Crime.

Carolyn Haines was the 2010 recipient of the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Writing, the 2009 recipient of the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, and the 2011 RT Reviewers' Choice Award for Best Amateur Sleuth. She is the author of more than sixty books in a number of genres. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of South Alabama where she teaches fiction writing.

Reviews

This mix of thriller and ghost story is all about what is just glimpsed for an instant, whether physically or psychologically. And the suspense is intensified by the fact that readers can’t be sure whether they’re following the thoughts of someone sane, unhinged, or in the process of coming apart. Aine Cahill, who has overcome her Kentucky hills background, is a Brandeis doctoral student working on her dissertation at Walden Pond. She believes she has irrefutable evidence that Thoreau was not alone during his famous sojourn but was having an affair with one of Aine’s female ancestors. The story takes the first of many eerie turns when Aine believes she is being watched by a ghostly little girl. The memory of the disappearance of a child years before haunts the townspeople, and the sudden murder of a woman adds more shock, while throwing suspicion on Aine. Great for both lovers of Thoreau and suspense fans. Chesterton (a pseudonym for crime writer Carolyn Haines) was the 2010 recipient of the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Writing. --Connie Fletcher

Edition details

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1605985007
• ISBN 13: 9781605985008
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352