My Soul to Keep »

A native Texan, Melanie Wells is the author of When the Day of Evil Comes and The Soul Hunter. A graduate of Southern Methodist University, Melanie holds masters degrees from Our Lady of the Lake University and Dallas Theological Seminary. She has taught at the graduate level at both institutions, has been in private practice as a counselor since 1992, and is the founder and director of LifeWorks counseling associates in Dallas, Texas. Melanie lives in Dallas with her dog, Gunner, who wishes she wouldn’t spend so much time at her computer.

As nasty as I knew Peter Terry to be, I never expected him to start kidnapping kids. Much less a sweet, funny little boy with nothing to protect him but a few knock-kneed women, two rabbits, and a staple gun…

It’s psychology professor Dylan Foster’s favorite day of the academic year–graduation day. A day of pomp, circumstance, and celebration. And after all the mortar boards are thrown, Dylan and some of her best friends will gather around a strawberry cake to celebrate Christine Zocci’s sixth birthday. But the joyful summer afternoon goes south when a little boy is snatched from a neighborhood park, setting off a chain of events that seem to lead exactly nowhere.

Police are baffled, but Christine’s eerie connection with the kidnapped child sends Dylan on a chilling investigation of her own. Is the pasty, elusive stranger Peter Terry to blame? Exploding light bulbs, the deadly buzz of a Texas rattlesnake, and the vivid, disturbing dreams of a little girl are just pieces in a long trail of tantalizing clues leading Dylan in her dogged search for the truth.

Publishers Weekly

In her third installment of the Dylan Foster series, Wells crafts a dark Christian supernatural thriller with lighter romance notes. Southern Methodist University psychology professor Dylan Foster fears that Peter Terry, the demon who stalks her, is on the move again. Nicholas, her friend Maria Chavez's five-year-old son (conceived after Maria was brutally raped in an earlier book), is snatched at a birthday party in a park near Dallas. Five-year-old birthday girl Christine Zocci, who witnesses the abduction and is hyperattuned to the supernatural, ends up in the emergency room after she mysteriously goes into cardiac arrest. Her clues about Nicholas's kidnapper may enable Dylan to find him-unless time runs out. Wells does a fine job developing Dylan's character, but is less successful showing the terror of the kidnapping and Maria's response, which seems far too calm. The suspense builds nicely, however, and the demon's use of a rattlesnake (real or unreal? Dylan isn't sure) will give ophiophobic readers appropriate chills. When the Day of Evil Comesand The Soul Huntershould be read first to follow the plot line; as a stand-alone this may be confusing. Christian readers who like their suspense with a heavy dollop of the supernatural should find this series to their taste. (Feb.)