Book picks similar to
The Devil in Canaan Parish by Jackie Shemwell


historical-fiction
fiction
louisiana
southern-fiction

The Leviathan


Rosie Andrews - 2022
    She is awake...Norfolk, 1643. With civil war tearing England apart, reluctant soldier Thomas Treadwater is summoned home by his sister, who accuses a new servant of improper conduct with their widowed father. By the time Thomas returns home, his father is insensible, felled by a stroke, and their new servant is in prison, facing charges of witchcraft.Thomas prides himself on being a rational, modern man, but as he unravels the mystery of what has happened, he uncovers not a tale of superstition but something dark and ancient, linked to a shipwreck years before.Something has awoken, and now it will not rest.Richly researched, incredibly atmospheric, and deliciously unsettling, The Leviathan is set in England during a time of political turbulence and religious zealotry. It is a tale of family and loyalty, superstition and sacrifice, but most of all it is a spellbinding story of impossible things.

Voodoo Season


Jewell Parker Rhodes - 2005
    This time, the award-winning author of historical fiction sets the story in the here and now. Meet Marie Levant. The great-great granddaughter of the beloved, tantalizing Marie Laveau, she is compelled by unseen forces to leave her medical career in Chicago behind and return to her roots. But once she arrives in New Orleans, Marie is both seduced and horrified by this mysterious landscape whose slave-holding past merges with the spoils of the twenty-first century. A place where the Quadroon Balls of yesterday are a present reality, and women of color are still being abused and, even more horrifying, rendered "undead." Yet through it all, Marie can't help but sense that she's lived here before . . . and that maybe there's more to this city's history and her own. With Voodoo Season, Rhodes once again presents her legions of fans with a heroine of authentic power and an alluring, unforgettable read.

Vanish with the Rose


Barbara Michaels - 1992
    Taking a job as a landscape architect at the last place Brad was seen—the sprawling estate where he worked as a caretaker—she prowls the strange old house determined to unlock its secrets. But each mystery Diana uncovers is more unsettling than the last, as odd visions, scents, and sounds pervade an atmosphere of dread and barely suppressed violence. And in her zealous search for answers, she may have inadvertently opened a door to something frightening and deadly that can never be closed again.

Whispers of the Bayou


Mindy Starns Clark - 2008
    But, trying to survive in troubled circumstances, she welcomes the chance to change her location for a period of time. The letter informs her that her grandparents' estate is finally about to become hers. She immediately heads down to Louisiana and the old house by the bayou. There Miranda finds secrets that lead to life-changing revelations.This suspenseful story reminiscent of old Gothic tales has a complex mystery and a vivid sense of the Deep South. It shows how God can take the darkest circumstances and use them to light a bright path leading to the future.

The Return


Rachel Harrison - 2020
    But Elise knows Julie better than anyone, and she feels in her bones that her best friend is out there, and that one day she'll come back. She's right. Two years to the day that Julie went missing, she reappears with no memory of where she's been or what happened to her.

The Survivors


Amanda Havard - 2011
    Fourteen of them survived. The Survivors is the first installment of the tantalizing tales of the fourteen ill-fated Survivors and their descendants, who have been content in hiding for over three centuries. Isolated on a Montana mountainside, only Sadie, the rogue daughter, dares to abandon the family's sacred hiding place. But no matter how far Sadie runs, something always pulls her back. On a muggy summer night in Tennessee, she witnesses a shocking scene that will change her life forever. It is the first in a sequence of events that will drag her from the human world she's sought to belong to for over a century and send her back to her Puritanical family and into an uncertain future filled with cunning witches, mysterious nosferatu shape-shifters, dangerous eretica and vieczy vampires, millennia-old mythology, and the search for her own mortality. After all... HOW DO YOU KILL A SURVIVOR? The Survivors will steal your heart and invade your mind. Fall into the pages of Sadie's life, a world so frighteningly similar to your own, you'll find yourself wanting to go to the Montana mountains to find the Survivors for yourself. And it is only the beginning.

The House of Ashes


Stuart Neville - 2021
    Sara, who knows no one in Northern Ireland, is jobless, carless, friendless—all but a prisoner in her own house. When a blood-soaked old woman beats on the door, insisting the house is hers before being bundled back to her care facility, Sara begins to understand the house has a terrible history her husband never intended for her to discover. Through the counterpoint voices of two women—one modern Englishwoman, one Northern Irish farmgirl speaking from half a century earlier—Stuart Neville offers a chilling and gorgeous portrait of violence and resilience in this truly haunting narrative.

The Haunting of Bell Mansion: A Haunted House Mystery- Book 1


James Hunt - 2018
    She hoped that she could disappear into the northern most reaches of the mountains and wait until people had forgotten her name. However, Bell had other plans.

The Winter Ghosts


Kate Mosse - 2009
     In the winter of 1928, still seeking some kind of resolution to the horrors of World War I, Freddie is traveling through the beautiful but forbidding French Pyrenees. During a snowstorm, his car spins off the mountain road. Dazed, he stumbles through the woods, emerging in a tiny village, where he finds an inn to wait out the blizzard. There he meets Fabrissa, a lovely young woman also mourning a lost generation. Over the course of one night, Fabrissa and Freddie share their stories. By the time dawn breaks, Freddie will have unearthed a tragic, centuries-old mystery, and discovered his own role in the life of this remote town.

Melmoth


Sarah Perry - 2018
    In Prague, working as a translator, she has found a home of sorts—or, at least, refuge. That changes when her friend Karel discovers a mysterious letter in the library, a strange confession and a curious warning that speaks of Melmoth the Witness, a dark legend found in obscure fairy tales and antique village lore. As such superstition has it, Melmoth travels through the ages, dooming those she persuades to join her to a damnation of timeless, itinerant solitude. To Helen it all seems the stuff of unenlightened fantasy.But, unaware, as she wanders the cobblestone streets Helen is being watched. And then Karel disappears. . . .

Lost and Found


Chloë Rayban - 2015
     She is sent over from England to sell the house as quickly as possible. But when she gets there something about the place enchants Julia. For although La Mulatière is decrepit, enormous and unmanageable, it is a house with a hundred stories, and all of them are begging Julia to uncover them. Her father’s legacy turns out to be a blessing in disguise. Julia finds herself falling in love with the house, the villagers – and perhaps even her brooding, surly neighbour, Jacques. Even as she is drawn to Jacques she is warned away from him by those who think they know him better. And unresolved issues with her ex, Oliver, might wreak havoc on her idyllic hideaway… La Mulatière begins to yield its secrets one by one, and Julia pieces together the past even as she tries to fathom her own future. Tales of the house in the Revolution, of its aristocracy flung from riches to abject poverty, and of a mysterious and scandalous noblewoman, all come to light. But the echoes from the past will not be silent in the present, and Julia slowly begins to realise that her prying might have serious consequences for her own future… Is La Mulatière the cure for Julia’s heartbreak...or will the past ruin what might be her last chance of happiness? ‘Lost and Found’ is a beautiful, evocative romance rich with the history of France. Praise for Chloe Rayban: ‘A perfect blend of romance and self-discovery’ - Holy Kinsella, bestselling author of 'Uptown Girl' Chloe Rayban is the bestselling author of 13 books for teenagers, including Wild Child (Random House). She has been shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize twice and the Carnegie Medal. Her books have been translated into many different languages and are sold all over the world. She lives in London and France. 'Lost and Found' is her first adult novel. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.

Mother Teresa's Advice for Jilted Lovers


Donna Barker - 2016
    Needless to say, Tara’s beginning to think she’s cursed when it comes to men. Her best friend, Betsy, who’s always there to put the pieces back together, convinces Tara she’s the cause of each of her boyfriend’s untimely exits to the other side. Could it be that Tara has that kind of psychic power? And is Betsy right that women all over the world would pay a pretty penny for it?What follows is a wild and humorous trek down the path of Tara’s spiritual growth and ultimate awakening. But the road to enlightenment is no cakewalk. It’s fraught with stacks of ill-gotten cash, death threats, and orange jumpsuits.

The Twisted Ones


T. Kingfisher - 2019
    After all, how bad could it be? Answer: pretty bad. Grandma was a hoarder, and her house is stuffed with useless rubbish. That would be horrific enough, but there’s more—Mouse stumbles across her step-grandfather’s journal, which at first seems to be filled with nonsensical rants…until Mouse encounters some of the terrifying things he described for herself. Alone in the woods with her dog, Mouse finds herself face to face with a series of impossible terrors—because sometimes the things that go bump in the night are real, and they’re looking for you. And if she doesn’t face them head on, she might not survive to tell the tale. From Hugo Award–winning author Ursula Vernon, writing as T. Kingfisher.

The Summoning


Mark Lukens - 2014
    a supernatural mystery.Edrington, Oregon - a town with a horrifying past. A town with dark secrets. A town where a woman has summoned something terrifying.Three hundred and fifty miles south, Ryan wakes up in a motel room with a bag of stolen money, bullet hole scars on his chest, and no memory of his past - his only clue is a scrap of paper in his wallet with an Edrington address scrawled on it.Plagued by nightmares of a tortured man who seems to be forcing his way from the dream world into our world, Ryan journeys north to the small Oregon town where the answers are waiting for him.

Island of Secrets


Tammie Clarke Gibbs - 2010
    Everyone thought the man was crazy.Shane Alexander was determined to prove to the world that his family wasn't crazy... That HE wasn't crazy.It was working...Until he made one mistake...that would change his life forever...and force him to question his own sanity.Something was missing from Lila Fitzpatrick's life...So doing a friend a favor...and pretending to be someone else for a day seemed like a good idea at the time.Then she finds a warning note...from hundreds of years BEFORE she was born.And then if that wasn't bad enough...She met HIM...TWICE!For centuries a force has kept them apart...But, will Love be enough to finally keep them together...Or will history repeat itself? A Time Travel- A Love Story filled with Suspense-A Mystery that will keep you guessing til the end... Former Georgia Author of the Year Nominee, Tammie Clarke Gibbs has crafted a sweeping new time travel with the old-fashioned appeal of your favorite Gothic Novel. It will keep you guessing. This is one roller-coaster ride you won’t want to miss.