By Blood Possessed - Softcover

Santangelo, Elena

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933523042 ISBN 13: 9781933523040

Publisher: Bella Rosa Books, 2006

Synopsis

Agatha Award Nominee Pat Montella, sick of her office job and looking for any shortcut to early retirement, receives a mysterious summons from a lawyer. A complete stranger--ninety-one-year-old Miss Maggie Shelby of Bell Run, Virginia--intends to bequeath her 200 acre estate to Pat. The catch is, Pat must spend a week there first with Miss Maggie, a retired history teacher who seems determined to make Pat her next star pupil. The past does indeed come alive for Pat, but in ways neither she nor Miss Maggie expect: phantom aromas of Union army chow, sounds of soldiers felling trees...and nightmarish visions of horrific battles. But while Pat delves into the saga of Bell Run and the family who gave their lives to protect it more than a century earlier, she finds, stalking her through the bewitching Virginia woodlands, a much more terrifying present-day murderer...

About this title

From the Back Cover

A VERY CONTEMPORARY WOMAN DISCOVERS A RICH PAST -- AND AN EXCITING FUTURE...

The dreary days of Pat Montella's life come to a screeching halt when she's summoned to the history-laden estate of Bell Run, Virginia, where she's to inherit its old farmhouse and lovely, spacious woodlands. Ninety-one-year-old Miss Magnolia Shelby reveals the surprising reason she has chosen Pat to be her heir. Energetic Miss Maggie's passion is the Civil War, and through uncanny visions, Pat soon discovers that history can indeed come alive: in the pungent scent of roasting pork and coffee...the sudden fearsome sight of long-ago battles...the sound of bullets striking wood.

What Pat "sees" while piecing together the tragic, poignant truth about Bell Run and the people who fought for it over a century ago, seduces her deeper into the past -- and into a danger more frightening and immediate than she can possibly know...

From Publishers Weekly

When Pat Montella receives a letter notifying her that she may be the heir to a large estate called Bell Run near Fredricksburg, Virginia, she's sure her ship has finally come in. Trapped in a boring day job as a business consultant in southern Pennsylvania, she's more than willing to overlook the strange circumstances surrounding her inheritance, including her 91-year-old benefactor Miss Magnolia Shelby's requirement that Pat stay at the old family home during the first week of May. After Pat arrives and learns that Shelby is a legendary history teacher, the request doesn't seem so odd. Pat is the only surviving member of Gabriel Bell's prosperous Confederate family. A stickler for historical justice, Shelby has decided to leave the property to its rightful owner. It's no secret that Bell Run is a developer's dream, however, and local real-estate shark Flora Shifflett wastes no time in making her services available. And Shifflett isn't the only one after the property; a notorious busybody wants the manor house restored for her beloved Historical Society; a rebellious teenager wants the land preserved to safeguard the local environment. As these competing demands plod along a desperately predictable course, the Bell family's dark past slowly comes to light. Before long, ghosts, voodoo dolls and death threats are headed Pat's way. Things take a serious turn when someone shoots at Pat with a rifle and her only rival for the inheritance turns up at the bottom of the nearby river. First-novelist Santangelo writes an atmospheric, entertaining tale, and has created an appealing heroine in Pat Montella. She's often only a hair shy of imitating Nancy Drew here, though, and never quite pulls off the Southern accent so central to the book.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bella Rosa Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1933523042
• ISBN 13: 9781933523040
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296