Stand-alone novels:
Garden of Thorns — (1992) Publisher:
Eighty years ago, a woman was murdered by her own husband. Tonight, another woman will hear her secrets... In Garden of Thorns, Mark is working at an archaeological excavation and Hilary at an art museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Their relationship is rocky enough without someone resorting to murder to keep his skeletons in the closet.
 Memory and Desire: A Novel of Mystery and Romance — (2000) Publisher:Claire came to the English village to find her best friend, Melinda, who'd vanished after performing in a play which re-creates a seventeenth century witchcraft trial. What she found was a murder mystery — and a man. A man who, like her, is trapped between memory and desire. The play takes place at the manor house where the protagonists lived and died, a house where the past is still a haunting presence. Did Melinda ask too many questions about the village's tragic history? To find her, Claire, too, must ask questions. What she learns is that everyone in the village is playing a role — not just in the melodrama, but in real life. Claire must walk a fine line between repeating the past and surviving the present. For if she puts one foot wrong she won't be seeing the future at all, let alone spending it with the man she's not only come to trust but to love.
 Shadows in Scarlet — (2001) Publisher: Amanda Witham sees her new job at an eighteenth-century house as a career move, just part of the history business, nothing personal. Then archaeologists find a man’s skeleton buried in the garden behind the house. That night James Grant’s ghost introduces himself to her. And a handsome and charming ghost he is, in the tartan kilt and scarlet coat of King George’s Highland Regiment. Suddenly Amanda finds history to be up close and very personal indeed. Like many handsome and charming men, James puts Amanda in a difficult position. She can hardly tell her friends and co-workers of her hands-on original source. And yet she promises James she’ll reveal the truth about his death — just as soon as she figures out what the truth is. So why was he buried in the garden when eighteenth-century records say he died in battle? Amanda’s quest begins in Colonial Williamsburg and ends at James’s ancestral castle in Scotland, which, she discovers, is still very much in the family. But nothing, not time and space, not illusion and reality, not love and death, turns out to be what she anticipated. And when James’s past finally catches up with her present, Amanda finds her future held at sword’s point.
 Time Enough to Die — (2002) Publisher: There are sins that whisper melodies of madness through the blood; sins that sing to us down and across the generations - no matter what the distance, we know them when we see them, and perhaps they know us, too. Keziah Mason was born a world away in time. She died horribly an age ago - or more. Now, there are whispers on the streets that she's returned. Returned as an old woman, ragged and unclean as any vagabond wandering the streets of Arkham. The sort of woman you or I might take to be an ordinary madwoman - until we draw close, and see her eyes. Eyes the color of dark light; eyes that glitter hatefully; eyes that watch everyone and everything around her with predatory yearning. Yearning - for a child. There are no words to tell a child all the horrors that abound in Arkham and the world. Not even malformed and orphaned Jason Laidlaw, the boy who is her misbegotten son. A boy as innocent as you or I - a boy who knows the evil in our bones. A child doomed by generations made of evil, and damned by birthright in a city haunted as its name. ARKHAM - welcome to the city of fear.
 Lucifer's Crown — (2003) Publisher: A young woman, Rose, finds a dead body in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey in England. But what starts out as a murder mystery soon becomes a much more complex story interweaving genuine history and mythology with elements of fantasy and romance. Rose, her conflicted teacher Maggie, and a young Scot on a quest are caught up in the timeless battle of good and evil, joining a tarnished saint to redeem the Holy Grail itself from the clutches of a very polished devil.
 Blackness Tower — (2008) Publisher: For years, Lauren Reay has experienced vivid dreams of a castle keep and a chapel overlooking the sea. Then she finds the real place: a restored 16th-century Blackness Tower on the coast of northern Scotland. Inside the tower, owned by handsome but reclusive David Sutherland, she finds a 19th-century portrait of a 16th-century woman... who has Lauren's face. Blackness  Tower holds strange powers and elemental presences that will change Lauren's life forever.
 Blackness Tower
For years, Lauren Reay had been haunted by a dream about a castle. Then, when her grandfather was on his deathbed, he received a calendar that included a photograph of the castle and a note about its location, causing Lauren to realize with a shock that her dream castle actually existed and was connected to her family. Now, her grandfather having passed away, Lauren travels to the remote north of Scotland to see the castle, Blackness Tower, and to dig into the tragic family history that led her ancestor to leave the area long ago.
Lauren soon learns that she’s a dead ringer for a scandalous woman who lived at Blackness Tower a century ago, who was herself a dead ringer for another scandalous woman who lived there in the sixteenth century. Blackness Tower is haunted, and to cleanse it, Lauren must unravel the mystery that ties all three women together. Also delving into the Tower’s history are three men: the new owner who has recently restored the castle, an archaeologist excavating the nearby cemetery, and a paranormal investigator looking for evidence of Blackness Tower’s ghosts.
Blackness Tower gets off to a slow start, and some of the language can seem overly portentous: lots of musings about fate and destiny. It does help establish Lauren as a character who is imaginative and “away with the fairies,” but it can also seem melodramatic, especially when not much is happening yet.
I can pinpoint the exact moment when Blackness Tower hooked me: when the excavations turned up something that was archaeologically impossible. From that point on, revelation follows quickly upon revelation, and the story catches up with its ominous language. Lillian Stewart Carl builds toward an otherworldly climax that is beautifully written, moving, and enchanting (and made me late getting back from my lunch break the day I finished it, because I just couldn’t stop in the middle of it!). The central factor in the novel’s resolution is not combat or even magic, but the characters’ choices between healing and bitterness.
Overall, I enjoyed Blackness Tower and am glad I read it. The readers who will get the most out of Blackness Tower are those with a soft spot for Gothic romance and/or ancient folklore of the British Isles. —Kelly Lasiter
|
links. Or donate.
