One by One by D.W. Gillespie

Hello everyone.

I've mentioned our old houses in the past. We currently are working on an American Four Square that is over one hundred years old. We have restored a 1907 Victorian that had been divided into apartments, we returned it to single family. One of the things we did during the Victorian renovation, which took almost ten years in total, was to remove the walls on the third floor. We put heating and air conditioning ducts behind knee walls and installed insulation. While removing the walls, we found so many things; photos, paintings, corset, letters, button-up shoes and more. One thing we found was the corner of an envelope with a company as a return address. We also found writing on the low roofing boards that held the metal roof. There were spots where children had written their names in colorful chalk. We were able to track down the family that had lived there right after the house was built through the company name on that envelope scrap. It was amazing to learn that the 70+ year old man we were talking to was only seven years old when he lived in our house and those names in chalk were his sisters. We were able to talk to them too. It was so fun and made the hard work worth it and the house feel so much more personal.

I recently read One by One written by D.W. Gillespie. This is the story of the Easton family of four, mom, dad, older boy, and a young girl. Most of the story is told from the young girl, Alice Easton's, prospective. This family finds a great old house that needs lots of work. Not only is there a rambling, creepy old house but a large lot complete with dark woods featuring an old locked shed. In addition, next to the house is a pool that is only half filled with sewage like, black, putrid water. My nightmare come true!  As the family moves in and starts to work on their new home, the dad becomes rage filled. Immediately my mind went to The Amityville Horror, and I prepared myself for a B movie-ish retelling. Boy was I wrong. Little Alice tears off a piece of wall paper and behind it finds a drawing of a family that looks remarkably like the Eastons. While the kids are blamed for the artwork, Alice knows the truth, it was underneath the wall paper that had been hung years ago.  Things start to spiral out of control when family members go missing, as an X appears over the representation of them in the drawing.

This story is spooky, hitting many of the horror story highs including that smelly dark pool, the locked shed, odd woods, huge house, angry adults, a possibly evil diary, and a snow storm that isolates this family from the outside world including help from the police. The story moves quickly, leading the reader from the innocent beginning to terrifying end. A very fun read, perfect for this time of year.

Back to some housewife stuff, we finally have someone hired to fix the damage from hurricane Dorian. I sincerely hope he doesn't find anything drawn under the siding.

The Whisper Man by Alex North

Hello everyone.

I hope you are having a great day. I started a new book today, that is always enjoyable. On the housewife side of life, our new dishwasher is finally installed. It took an Act of Congress but it is done. Of course, all the dishes are already clean so the plumber ran a quick rinse cycle to check his connections (yes, we had to hire a plumber.....see me shaking my head in disgust). We have yet to dirty enough dishes to actually run an entire wash cycle. I really hope it works and actually cleans, I would hate to start over. I can live without fancy vacations, gems, baubles and a mega yacht but I need a great working dishwasher, air conditioning and a dvr with plenty of space. Don't give me that look, you're reading this on a computer or fancy phone. We all have a skewed vision of "need" these days (but just for the record mine are real needs).

With my love of books, I'm obviously an avid book buyer. Sometimes, advanced copies show up at my door. They make it feel like Christmas morning and I am always very grateful. One day I opened a package from Celadon Books. I jumped a foot. As I was removing the contents it started singing. I am not joking, it literally started singing this creepy song that is impossible to get out of your head. I even did my tried and true method for ridding myself of a song, humming the theme from Gilligan's Island. Good old Gilligan and the Skipper too, usually work for me, but not this time. In the book Celadon sent, there is a children's song that warns of the villain in this thriller and that is the song emanating from the package. Of course, it was like one of those cards where you can record your own greeting for your grandma but let me assure you there was nothing grandmotherly about this song!

Now you want to know what the book was, huh? Well the wild, spooky PR came with The Whisper Man by Alex North. This thriller is the story of a father, Tom, and his son, Jake, who are trying to heal after the death of Tom's wife/Jake's mother. Jake has pulled away from his dad, becoming somewhat remote, often quietly drawing by himself instead of socializing or leaning on his dad for support. Tom decides they need to move out of the house where his wife died. Jake is all for it and finds a house he likes, pushing his dad to buy it, which Tom does. As the story proceeds, we find that the house, like the people in this story, has many secrets.

The Whisper Man, was serial killer of young children. This predator was called The Whisper Man because before being kidnapped then killed, the children heard someone whispering outside their bedroom window. Fortunately this evil man was caught and has been in prison for many years. Concerns mount when a local child goes missing and the police learn that he heard whispering outside his window. Is this the work of a copycat killer?  Now, as Tom tries to reclaim and rebuild his relationship with his beloved son, Jake begins hearing whispers outside his window.

This book is a fast read. It is very easy to get into with well-defined and likable characters. Full of unseen twists and turns this story is hard to put down. Thriller lovers, this is our bread and butter....warming of the roll not necessary. Let me put it this way, I was upstairs reading, toward the end I yelled "Oh my God" so loudly my husband came running up eighteen steps thinking something was wrong. Something was wrong, read this book to find out all about it.

The song:

29 Seconds by T.M. Logan

Hello everyone.

Hope you are all well.  Did you get hit with hurricane Dorian? Did you see the Bahamas? How terrible. I find a category one hurricane terrifying, I cannot imagine what those people went through. Sadly, we did have damage. I know you are aware we have a historic house, but someone slapped aluminum siding on it in the 1970's and we are not taking it off.  First, the siding actually provides warmth which is especially useful in an area where old houses were built with no insulation, and secondly, we'd have to get permission from the historic planning committee to change the outside. We really don't need anymore hoops to jump through. I am already feeling like a cross between a circus pony and the old high-diving horses from Atlantic City (which my parents made me go see when I was really little). During the storm we lost a good hunk of siding, actually the back and side of our house, not the whole thing but the soffit. For those of you that don't speak "house", that is the part way at the tippy top that touches the roof. We have three stories over a high basement so the soffit is more than thirty feet high, we will need a contractor to tack it back up. Naturally they are all swamped. Estimate number one is supposed to arrive this afternoon, hard to really seriously gripe about when so many people have lost their lives. Enough of that, on to something much more pleasant, a new book.

I recently read 29 Seconds by T.M. Logan. If he sounds familiar it is because he wrote the book Lies, a thriller, which I liked very much. 29 Seconds is the story of a woman, Sarah, who has the boss from hell. Sarah is a teacher at the college level, she is trying to get the British version of tenure. Her boss, Alan, denies her repeatedly, making it very clear her career is not advancing and he will ensure it is completely over unless she sleeps with him whenever he desires. Sarah is a married woman with children who finds her boss disgusting. After an unusual situation our heroine teacher meets a man with ties to the Russian underworld. He insists he owes her a favor and wants to provide his specialty...making people disappear. All she has to do is give him a name.

You, obviously, know where this story is headed, the main character is going to wrestle with her morals about the possibility of giving her boss's name to this criminal. She resists even after Alan  gets more offensive with every chapter. Frankly, I would have smacked him across the face long ago and would have given his name to the Russian mobster without reservation, morals smorals  Heck the boss is so bad I probably would have purchased a megaphone to yell his name for the vanishing treatment, not the cheapo old fashioned cones either, the electronic annoyingly loud megaphones. Yes, I know I've just defined myself as a morally bankrupt, not nice, perhaps even murderous person. Read it, see what you'd do.

I am greatly simplifying the story, it is much more interesting that this simple plot and has many twists and turns. It is well written, grabs your attention from the beginning and moves quickly to a satisfying end. Two well paced, interesting thrillers now from this author, I am anxious for his next novel.

Do you think I should mention that whole morally inept, possibly murderous, thriller reader to any contractors coming to fix our house. Wonder if they would work faster or run.