The Widow of Pale Harbor by Hester Fox (Book Beginnings & Friday56)

 

Title: The Widow of Pale Harbor

Author: Hester Fox

Publication: 17 September 2019 - Graydon House

Format: Paperback & Kindle eBook

Amazon Description: 

Maine, 1846. Gabriel Stone is desperate to escape the ghosts that haunt him in Massachusetts after his wife’s death, so he moves to Maine, taking a position as a minister in the remote village of Pale Harbor.

But not all is as it seems in the sleepy town. Strange, unsettling things have been happening, and the townspeople claim that only one person can be responsible: Sophronia Carver, a reclusive widow who lives with a spinster maid in the eerie Castle Carver. Sophronia must be a witch, and she almost certainly killed her husband.

As the incidents escalate, one thing becomes clear: they are the work of a twisted person inspired by the wildly popular stories of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. And Gabriel must find answers, or Pale Harbor will suffer a fate worthy of Poe’s darkest tales.

Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff

I finished Cynthia Kuhn's How to Book a Murder on Wednesday afternoon -- not long after oohing and aahing about it for this week's WWW Wednesday post. While not strictly Poe-centric in the telling, there were a lot of Poe references there -- "Annabel Lee," in particular.

I was trying to decide between The Widow of Pale Harbor and Robert Bryndza's Darkness Falls for which one to dive into first and then, between the title page and the official beginning of Chapter 1, The Widow of Pale Harbor blessed me with this:

I took it as a sign. 

Then I forgot my copy at home when I left for work. 

Luckily, it's currently available with Kindle Unlimited so I not only get to spend my downtime at work being completely absorbed by the words of Hester Fox, but I also get to pull a pretty perfect blip from the 56% mark in the book. I had already chosen a bit from page 156, but the 56% is just a wee tiny bit more .... something. 

Right now I am far away from actually hitting the 56% mark myself because there hasn't been as much downtime at work as I had originally figured that there would be. We can add to that the fact that in less than a week I leave for my mini-vacay to see my 💕 for the first time since June and still need the perfect pair of shoes. I probably could have had a lot more read by now had I not gotten horribly wonderfully distracted on the quest for Mary Janes that would arrive in time and not cost as much as my plane ticket.

It's all good. 

Shoes should arrive on Sunday and I have the next two nights off. I also have a sneaking suspicion that The Widow of Pale Harbor will keep me up way past my bedtime to keep reading. It will be perfect for Sunday morning's I'll Sleep When I've Read... post. Maybe you could come back then and see ....

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As always, Friday 56 (share a blurb from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice 

& Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader.