THE FATE OF MERCY ALBAN


Grace Alban has spent more than twenty years avoiding her childhood home, the stately Alban House on the shores of Lake Superior, for reasons she would rather forget. But when her mother’s unexpected death brings Grace and her teenage daughter back, she finds more is haunting the halls and passageways of Alban House than her own personal demons.

Long-buried family secrets, a packet of old love letters, and a lost manuscript plunge Grace into a decades-old mystery about a scandalous party at Alban House, when a world-famous author took his own life and Grace’s aunt disappeared without a trace.

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Grace Alban has spent more than twenty years avoiding her childhood home, the stately Alban House on the shores of Lake Superior, for reasons she would rather forget. But when her mother’s unexpected death brings Grace and her teenage daughter back, she finds more is haunting the halls and passageways of Alban House than her own personal demons.

Long-buried family secrets, a packet of old love letters, and a lost manuscript plunge Grace into a decades-old mystery about a scandalous party at Alban House, when a world-famous author took his own life and Grace’s aunt disappeared without a trace. The night has been shrouded in secrecy by the powerful Alban family for all of these years. Her mother intended to tell the truth about that night to a reporter on the very day she died—could it have been murder? Or was she a victim of the supposed Alban curse? Grace soon realizes her family secrets tangle and twist as darkly as the mansion’s secret passages.

With the help of the disarmingly kind—and attractive—Reverend Matthew Parker, Grace must uncover the truth about her home and its curse before she and her daughter become the next victims.

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  • Hyperion
  • Paperback
  • February 2013
  • 352 Pages
  • 9781401341930

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$15.99

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About Wendy Webb

Wendy Webb is the author of The Tale of Halcyon Crane, the 2011 winner of the Minnesota Book Award for genre fiction, an Indie Next Pick from the Independent Booksellers Association, a Midwest Connections Pick from the Midwest Booksellers Association, and a Great Lakes, Great Reads Pick from the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association. She lives in Duluth, Minnesota.

Praise

"In the gothic tradition of Rebecca and The House of the Seven Gables, Wendy Webb’s intoxicating mystery The Fate of Mercy Alban follows one family’s effort to confront the secrets of its own sordid past as they haunt the last remaining members of the storied Alban clan. Hidden passages, portraits with moving eyes, and the conflicting mandates of wealth, power, and love weave together to create a story that will send chills down your spine. Read in a well-lit room!"Katherine Howe, bestselling author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and The House of Velvet and Glass