Library Loot: May 25-31

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire (The Captive Reader) and Marg (The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader) that encourages bloggers to share the books they've checked out of the library. If you'd like to participate, just write up your post, feel free to steal button, and link up using the Mr. Linky on Claire's site this week. And, of course, check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.

Just one book this week:
The After House by Mary Roberts Rinehart: Newly out of the hospital and totally out of funds, young Ralph Leslie longed for a sea voyage. So he jumped at the chance to sign aboard millionaire Marshall Turner's luxurious super-yacht as a steward to the passengers lodged in its after house. His job was easy sailing--until one sultry night the dream voyage suddenly became a nightmare of blood and terror. One ship's office was thrown overboard. Another was hacked to death with an axe. The killer struck again and again, and the Ella was awash in a wave of panic that engulfed passengers and crew alike. Only one hand aboard--ex-landlubber Leslie--seemed enough in control to stay the bloody hand of the murderer. But he'd have to stay alive to do it--and that wasn't going to be easy!

And a find in the Friends of the Library Book Store:
The Seance by John Harwood: A haunting tale of apparitions, a cursed manor house, and two generations of women determined to discover the truth, by the author of The Ghost Writer. "Sell the Hall unseen; burn it to the ground and plow the earth with salt, if you will; but never live there . . ." So begins The Séance, John Harwood’s brilliant second novel, a gripping, dark mystery set in late-Victorian England.

Constance Langton grows up in a household marked by death, her father distant, her mother in perpetual mourning for Constance’s sister, the child she lost. Desperate to coax her mother back to health, Constance takes her to a séance: perhaps she will find comfort from beyond the grave. But the meeting has tragic consequences. Constance is left alone, her only legacy a mysterious bequest that will blight her life.

It is a world of apparitions, of disappearances and unnatural phenomena, of betrayal and blackmail and black-hearted villains—and murder. For Constance’s bequest comes in two parts: a house and a mystery. Years before, a family disappeared at Wraxford Hall, a decaying mansion in the English countryside with a sinister reputation.Now the Hall belongs to Constance. And she must descend into the darkness at the heart of the Wraxford Mystery to find the truth, even at the cost of her life.

Leftover Loot:
The Religious Body by Catherine Aird
The Highly Effective Detective by Richard Yancey