A sleight of hand. A trick up the sleeve. A call for the dead. It’s all part of the game in this twisty tale by the bestselling author of After Alice Fell.

New Hampshire, 1877. Maud Price was once a celebrated child medium, a true believer in lifting the veil between the living and the dead. Now penniless, her guiding spirits gone, the so-called “Maid of Light” is desperate to regain her reputation—but doing so means putting her faith in deceiving others.

Clementine Watkins, known in spiritualist circles for her bag of tricks and utmost discretion, creates the sort of theatrics that can fill Maud’s parlor again, and with each misdirection, Maud’s fame is restored. But her guilt is a heavy burden. And the ruse has become a risk. Others are plotting to expose the fraud, and Clem can’t allow anyone—even Maud—to jeopardize the fortune the hoax has made her.

When the deception hints at a possible murder, Maud realizes how dangerous a game she’s playing. But to return to the light from which she’s strayed, she must first survive the darkness created by Clem’s smoke and mirrors.

Review:

Vivid, cunning, and mysterious!

The Deception is an eerie, sinister tale that transports you to New Hampshire during 1877 and into the lives of two main characters. Maud Price, a young woman who, after being a successful child medium, is struggling to make ends meet now that her connection to the afterlife has dwindled and her clientele are moving on, and Clementine Watkins, a selfish unscrupulous inventor driven by purely altruistic motives who finds the perfect partner to use, manipulate, and showcase her exceptional ability at creating illusions, theatrics, and misdirection.

The prose is tight and gritty. The characters are vulnerable, troubled, and resourceful. And the plot is a menacing tale about life, loss, tragedy, desperation, lies, manipulation, ruthless ambition, familial drama, secrets, and supernatural phenomena.

Overall, The Deception is a dark, gothic, intense novel by Blakemore that does a wonderful job of interweaving historical movements and compelling fiction into a suspenseful mystery that is deliciously atmospheric and highly entertaining.

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

Until she discovers the truth of her sister’s death, no one will rest in peace.

New Hampshire, 1865. Marion Abbott is summoned to Brawders House asylum to collect the body of her sister, Alice. She’d been found dead after falling four stories from a steep-pitched roof. Officially: an accident. Confidentially: suicide. But Marion believes a third option: murder.

Returning to her family home to stay with her brother and his second wife, the recently widowed Marion is expected to quiet her feelings of guilt and grief—to let go of the dead and embrace the living. But that’s not easy in this house full of haunting memories.

Just when the search for the truth seems hopeless, a stranger approaches Marion with chilling words: I saw her fall.

Now Marion is more determined than ever to find out what happened that night at Brawders, and why. With no one she can trust, Marion may risk her own life to uncover the secrets buried with Alice in the family plot.

Review:

Gritty, immersive, and haunting!

After Alice Fell is a sinister, historical thriller set in New Hampshire during 1865 that takes you into the life of Marion Abbott, a young woman determined to discover what really happened to her sister Alice at Brawders House, the local asylum, and prove once and for all that her sister didn’t commit suicide but was actually murdered.

The writing is atmospheric and eerie. The characters are tormented, insistent, and resourceful. And the plot is a taut, twisty, evocative tale rife with desperation, manipulation, abuse, familial dynamics, deviance, greed, jealousy, and murder.

Overall, After Alice Fell is a dark, engrossing, well-written tale by Kim Taylor Blakemore that does a wonderful job of highlighting the struggles and hardships of life at the end of the civil war, and reminds us of some of the unimaginable, horrific practices deemed appropriate treatments at that time for those considered to be mentally defective.

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.