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BY BLOOD POSSESSED— Agatha Award Nominee
Author: Elena Santangelo
Reissue Edition
5.5"x8.5" Trade Paperback

ISBN 1-933523-04-2

Pat Montella, sick of her office job and looking for any shortcut to early retirement, receives a mysterious summons from a lawyer. A complete stranger--ninety-one-year-old Miss Maggie Shelby of Bell Run, Virginia--intends to bequeath her 200 acre estate to Pat. The catch is, Pat must spend a week there first with Miss Maggie, a retired history teacher who seems determined to make Pat her next star pupil. The past does indeed come alive for Pat, but in ways neither she nor Miss Maggie expect: phantom aromas of Union army chow, sounds of soldiers felling trees...and nightmarish visions of horrific battles.

But while Pat delves into the saga of Bell Run and the family who gave their lives to protect it more than a century earlier, she finds, stalking her through the bewitching Virginia woodlands, a much more terrifying present-day murderer...

"First novels don't get much more interesting than this one.. A complete success from start to finish."
--Booklist

"Santangelo writes an atmospheric, entertaining tale and has created an appealing heroine in Pat Montella."
--Publishers Weekly

"Historical and contemporary elements blend into a very satisfying and suspenseful story."
--Library Journal

"Elena Santangelo has cooked up a tale just as tantalizing as her heroine Pat Montella's tomato sauce. Her ingredients are humor, suspense, compassion, and a deep respect for the past.
With a graceful style that combines warmth and spice, Elena creates a gripping Civil War story--mixing past and present, youth and age, love and hate. This is not a book to rush through, but one to savor-and remember."
--Robin Hathaway, Agatha Award-winning author of The Doctor Digs A Grave

"Brava, Elena Santangelo for writing a unique and thoroughly satisfying page-turner that has it all: depth and humor, compelling mysteries in the past and present, a haunting sense of place and of history and what it means, plus characters I'll long remember. I couldn't put it down. What a grand debut! Encore! Encore!"
--GILLIAN ROBERTS, author of both the Amanda Pepper and Emma Howe series

About the Author:

Elena Santangelo is both history buff and ghost story connoisseur. Her first novel, BY BLOOD POSSESSED, was an Agatha Award Finalist for Best First Novel. She is also an award-winning writer of short mysteries and ghost tales. Find out more at www.elenasantangelo.com.

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