Five Mile House »

This is Karen Novak's first novel. She lives in Mason, Ohio.

A modern day mystery haunted by a 19th Century ghost.

Eleanor Bly haunts Five Mile House, looking for someone to tell her story to. Jumping from a window to her death in 1889, Eleanor's soul is at unrest until the truth is told about her life and death. She finally finds Leslie, one hundred years later. Leslie bears an uncanny resemblance to Eleanor and is sympathetic if only because of the ghost she carries around herself...

In a moment of temporary insanity, Leslie shoots and kills the suspected perpetrator of a hideous child murder. When evidence is inconclusive, Leslie enters a severe depression and is temporarily institutionalized. When she is released from the hospital, her husband, in an effort to change their environment, takes his family to a small New England town to work on a mysterious restoration project of Five Mile House. It doesn't take long for them to hear about Eleanor, a 19th century madwoman who murdered her seven children in Five Mile House. Leslie becomes obsessed with Eleanor's story, suspecting that the truth may be different from the accepted myth. Wellington, locally known for its coven of wiccan followers, has many secrets of its own.

The stories of both women are told in parallel narratives until they converge at the very end. As frightening as it is suspenseful, Five Mile House is a classic page-turner, a haunted house story and also the story about the lengths a mother will go to in order to protect her children.

Publishers Weekly

In this strong debut, Novak combines suspense with modern witchcraft. Police detective Leslie Stone, a child abuse specialist, shoots an assumed perpetrator; after recuperation in a mental hospital, she leaves the police force. Then her carpenter husband, Greg, accepts an important restoration job at historic Five Mile House in the seemingly idyllic village of Wellington, whose main employer, a concrete recycling plant, is run by Wiccans who are searching for an ancient magical text. So is Harry Wellington, the owner of Five Mile House. As a curious Leslie researches the history of Wellington, Five Mile House and the deaths of the last family who inhabited it--the mother, Eleanor Bly, supposedly murdered seven of her children and committed suicide--she realizes she looks exactly like Eleanor. Is it coincidence or the reason the Stones were lured to Wellington? Leslie begins an edgy affair with local lawyer Phillip Hogarth and is befriended by enigmatic herbalist Gwen Garrett. Meanwhile, the ghosts of Eleanor and Amy, whose murder ended Leslie's police career, hover. Eleanor's ghost narrates part of the story, with some disconcerting shifts in tense. By the conclusion, Novak has the reader on tenterhooks as Leslie finds herself in mortal danger. Although this is more a damsel-in-distress novel with a supernatural bent than a traditional mystery, Novak successfully weaves the components together and leaves an opening for a sequel. Agent, Elizabeth Sheinkman at Elaine Markson. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.