Dead of Winter

As a murderer dumps a body into the lake, Bella Jordan just happens to be staring out her window, not really seeing anything. It's winter in Lily Dale and there are not many tourists in the town of mediums. In Dead of Winter by Wendy Corsi Staub, Bella notices something along the lake the next morning and discovers it is a body.

With a killer loose in Lily Dale, Bella worries about her six-year-old son Max and his pal Jiffy. Jiffy is a wandering child with a spirit guide; his mother Misty is a medium but not a very good one.

While Bella readies Valley View, the B&B she rents for visitors, she worries about the boys walking home from the bus stop by themselves. As they are wandering home on their own, Jiffy tells Max he is going to be kidnapped and he wants Max to tell the TV people that Jiffy is brave.

Bella tries to laugh it off, but she knows Jiffy has special abilities and wonders what he really knows.

When a blizzard threatens Lily Dale, and school is dismissed early, Bella wants to walk down the lane to meet Jiffy, but Max is home sick and she doesn't want to leave him. When Jiffy doesn't turn up, everyone is worried he is lost in the snow storm, which is raging.

While the police search, Misty is unable to wait for the police to find him, she wanders out into the snow to Inspiration Stump to "sense" what might have happened to Jiffy. There she encounters a desperate killer and a fight to save her life and find Jiffy.

I always enjoy the Lily Dale series and Dead of Winter gave me the chills each and every step of the way. The atmospheric air to Lily Dale and the many mediums present in the town hint at supernatural events. I very much enjoy this series.

Spiritualism in New York

Awakening Lily Dale #1 by Wendy Corsi Staub was out of my usual cozy mystery range, but it is an interesting story with the promise of more mystery. After her mother's accidental death Calla Delaney leaves Florida and goes to stay with eccentric grandmother Odelia in a western New York town. Lily Dale is known for being the world's largest center for the religion of spiritualism and Odelia is a medium. She sees people at her home on a regular basis, trying to help them with their problems.


Although Calla is only planning to stay with her grandmother for the summer until her father finds a new place for them to live in California, she soon finds herself seeing and feeling things she is unsure of. When more strange things begin to happen to Calla, she wonders if she has inherited some of the spiritual qualities. She begins to understand why her mother never talked about her life in Lily Dale and why she knows so little about her grandmother and her powers. 


Calla also begins to feel as if her mother's death might not have been an accident and she strives to figure out what could possibly have happened. A recurring nightmare wakes her every night at 3:17 am and she is baffled by this event. In her head she hears "The only way to we'll learn the true is to dredge the lake..." What does that mean? When she asks Odelia evades the question, but tells her not to go into the lake for any reason.

Did Calla's mother die accidentally or was she murdered? Is Calla psychic and who is the girl she keeps seeing in the yard?
 
I enjoyed this book and look forward to the finding the answers to some of the questions next in the series.