Matty Groves (Haunted Ballad)

New York: Minotaur Books, 2005-10-01. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8x5x1. No Stock Photos! We photograph every item. light edge wear to boards and jacket; first edition, first printing; Ringan Laine has a prized invitation to perform with his band at the Callowen House Arts Festival and he's been asked to bring his longtime lover, actor-producer Penny Wintercraft-Hawkes, along as an honored guest. At the prestigious two-week annual festival, artists not only perform to a handpicked audience, but enjoy every luxury their host has to offer. For Ringan and Penny, it's a mixed blessing. The couple has already held two terrifying exorcisms for ghosts whose stories are told in songs, and Callowen House is known to be haunted by the pretty young wife of a seventeenth-century Leight-Arnold. A famous traditional song, Matty Groves, tells her story, a straightforward one that Miles Leight-Arnold is very proud of. Ringan and Penny decide to attend; after all, this story has no mystery for them to solve. But from the first night it becomes clear that the tragic Lady Susanna is not the only spirit haunting Callowen House. Something else is awake, moving through walls and nightmares, growing stronger as it feeds on Penn's sensitivity and on the very fear it creates: Andrew Leight, a man as twisted and violent in death as he was in life. Lord Callowen insists that Ringan and Penny rid Callowen House of the dangerous Leight but leave Lady Susanna's ghost untouched. As the pair searches the mansion's ancient ledgers, Ringan and Penny begin to suspect that Lady Susanna's death was not as simple as the song suggests, and that the truth may expose a four-hundred-year-old lie. The third entry in this series, Matty Groves is another bewitching tale of how mysteries thought dead and buried can still return to threaten the living.