Wednesday, February 05, 2003

By Blood Possessed by Elena Santangelo. Out of the blue, Pat Montella learns that an elderly Virginia woman, Magnolia Shelby, wants to leave her some land in her will. But a condition of the bequest is that Pat go to Virginia and spend some time with Miss Maggie. It turns out the land is the site of a Civil War battle, and Pat soon learns that she has a strange, eerie connection to events that happened 150 years ago, for she begins to hear sounds no one else hears, see things no one else sees. In many ways, this is a traditional mystery--someone seems to want to keep Pat from inheriting the land, and Pat has to figure out who--but it has a certain otherworldly quality that will appeal to readers of supernatural thrillers, for it offers an intriguing premise: If Pat's experiences aren't just a trick of her mind, can she use her unusual gift to solve a century-and-a-half-old mystery?