Tales of haunting and mystery perfect for Halloween!
This Halloween, treat (or terrify) yourself with the University of Michigan Press's most hair-raising titles!
Susan Newhof's Spirits & Wine is a mystery and a ghost story, all wrapped up in one. In the novel, a newly married couple buys an old house in a small lakeshore town in West Michigan and finds it haunted by the dramatic secrets of its past inhabitants. As the couple settles in, disturbing events prompt them to investigate who those residents were, what happened to them, and why one spirit remains active. Could the Spanish influenza epidemic in the region, which resulted in the deaths of an unprecedented number of young, healthy adults in Michigan and elsewhere in 1918 - and left many orphans in its wake - have something to do with the spirit now haunting their house? The couple is determined to find out the truth, even if it jeopardizes their own safety.
Faithful Unto Death is set in Benzonia, Michigan, in 1894: a sleepy Congregationalist community. Anna Spencer Thacker, the daughter of
missionaries, is a faithful wife, a mother of five, and pious to a fault. Suddenly, she is stricken with a mysterious ailment that soon proves fatal. But was it truly an unfortunate illness? Or was it murder? Or suicide? Taking a true story of murder in her own family, Becky Thacker crafts a historical mystery novel populated with a cast of fascinating characters who could each be suspected of foul play, and provides a window into the daily lives of small-town Michiganders at the turn of the century wrapped up in a riveting whodunit.
