Diese Seite verwendet Cookies für unsere Dienste, zur Verbesserung unserer Leistungen, für Analytik und (falls Sie nicht eingeloggt sind) für Werbung. Indem Sie LibraryThing nutzen, erklären Sie dass Sie unsere Nutzungsbedingungen und Datenschutzrichtlinie gelesen und verstanden haben. Die Nutzung unserer Webseite und Dienste unterliegt diesen Richtlinien und Geschäftsbedingungen.
Ergebnisse von Google Books
Auf ein Miniaturbild klicken, um zu Google Books zu gelangen.
More than sixty years after one of four friends in a reputedly haunted boarding school goes missing, journalist Fiona Sheridan resolves to learn her sister's fate before a harrowing discovery is made.
Vermont, 1950: There's a place for the girls whom no one wants: the troublemakers, the illegitimate, the too smart for their own good. It's called Idlewild Hall. And in the small town of Barrons, there are rumors that the boarding school is haunted. Four roommates bond over their whispered fears-- until one of them mysteriously disappears. 2014: Journalist Fiona Sheridan cannot stop revisiting the events surrounding her older sister's death twenty years earlier; Deb's body was found lying in the overgrown fields near the ruins of Idlewild Hall. Now the Hall is being restored by an anonymous benefactor, and shocking secrets are uncovered-- secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the past ... and a voice that won't be silenced.… (mehr)
“Fiona realized as she walked inside that she’d been picturing something Harry-Potter-like, with high Gothic ceilings and warm candlelight.” (Quotation page 56)
Content: Idlewild Hall had been a boarding school for girls, sent away by their families. Finally closed around 1979 and since abandoned, the new owners want to restore it and reopen the house as a new, modern school. Young Journalist Fiona Sheridan has her own bitter memories connected with the Idlewild property, as twenty years ago her sister Deb had been found dead on the former sports field. Although Tim, her sister’s boyfriend, had been sentenced, for Fiona there are still lots of very unclear details and open questions. She wants to write an article about Idlewild Hall and starts her own researches. When the renovation team finds the remains of the body of a young girl, dead for more than sixty years and definitely murdered, she digs deep into the past of Idlewild Hall. Who was Mary Hand?
Theme and genre: This dark and atmospheric story is written in the perfect tradition of the famous Gothic fiction originated in England in the second half of the 18th and the 19th century. There are female heroines, four girls in 1950 and Fiona in 2014, a ghost and darkness and mysteries. Topic are the living conditions of for different reasons unwanted girls in the early 60ies, but also female friendship, tenacity and courage, now and then. Another topic are grieve and loss and the Holocaust.
Characters: Fiona is likeable, because although her questions are soon getting dangerous for her, she is not willing to stop and give up. 1950, in the dark, cold surrounding of Idlewild School, four girls, Katie, Roberta, CeCe and Sonia are best friends, holding together against everything.
Plot and writing: The story takes place in Barrons, Vermont. There are two timelines, the fifties with each chapter focusing on one of the four girls and 2014, with details going back to 1994. Both timelines are gripping und breathtaking, with surprising twists and turns. Especially historical facts connected to Sophie´s story were thoroughly researched.
Conclusion: A dark, atmospheric novel in the tradition of the famous English Gothic literature, gripping and full of suspense. A perfect pageturner, sleepless nights included. ( )
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite.Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen.
This book is for my mother, the greatest heroine of my life. I love you, Mom.
Erste Worte
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite.Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen.
The sun vanished below the horizon as the girl crested the rise of Old Barrons Road.
Zitate
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite.Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen.
Barrons consisted of some well-preserved historic buildings in the center of town, used to draw the few tourists who came through, surrounded by a hardscrabble population that hoped those same tourists didn't notice their falling-down porches and the piles of firewood in their driveways.
He had left off his hat, and the wind tried to tousle his hair.
"I came to apologize," she said. He raised his eyebrows. "For what?" "For freaking you out last night. For leaving." His eyes narrowed. "You're not actually sorry," he observed. "Still, I'm apologizing," she said, holding his gaze. "I mean it. Okay?"
That trip to Old Barrons Road had shaken something loose. Idlewild had always loomed silently in the back of her mind, a dark part of her mental landscape. She'd done her best not to talk about it for twenty years, but talking about it out loud now was like bloodletting.
Jamie had pulled up the stool next to her—handsome, muscled, glorious in a jaded way, a guy who looked like he'd been a college athlete before something had made him go as quiet and wary as a wild animal.
He was smart, quietly funny. What he saw in her, she was less sure of, and she didn't ask; maybe it was the sex—which was particularly good—or companionship. All she knew was that she'd rather amputate her own arm with a rusty handsaw than have the where are we going? conversation.
she waited for him to call up the information from somewhere in his circuitry
"You could have found all of this stuff out yourself, you know." "I know," Fiona replied, and she felt herself smiling at him. "But it's more fun to get information from you."
Cindy Benshaw shifted in her chair and scratched her ear, the motion of her arm revealing the circles of sweat stains on the armpit of her blouse, like the rings of an old tree.
The details were shaky and juddery in places, like a film coming off its reel.
An unused sitting room sat primly on the right, old figurines and knickknacks growing dust on its fussy shelves.
The trees waved in the wind, the bare branches overhanging the car wafting like a sultan's fan. Fiona shivered and sand farther into her coat, unwilling to move for the moment. She had done this the other night, too—sat in her parked car at the side of the road, staring at nothing and thinking. There was something soothing and meditative about the side of a road, a place most people passed by. As a child she'd spent car rides looking out the window, thinking of the places they passed, wondering what it would be like to stop there, or there, or there. It had never been enough for her just to get from one place to another.
"The police don't have all the answers, and neither does the government. The people are where you find things. Like those records you just found. The people are the ones who keep the memories and the records the power that be would rather erase."
he had been so painfully, vibrantly alive it had almost hurt to be around him. The air had crackled when he walked into a room.
That twenty-year-old fear was buried deep in the tenor of his voice, but Fiona could hear it. It was like a whistle on a dog's frequency.
The other girls got out of bed and huddled around, even Sonia, all four of them in white nightgowns like ghosts.
Fiona closed her eyes to the blacktop flying by, to the stark trees and the gray sky, to everything.
The memories weren't the overwhelming ones she'd had that had made her sick. These were like a violin bow grinding along the edge of a single string, shrill, waiting for some kind of resolution to make it stop. The only thing that worked was writing.
After so much speculation, so much searching, here was Sonia's living history, sitting across from her in a coffee shop.
"She's still there, isn't she?" she said. "Of course Mary is still there. You've seen her." "Have you?" Fiona asked, her voice a rasp. "Every girl who went to Idlewild saw Mary. Sooner or later." Spoken quietly, matter-of-factly, the madness of seeing a ghost turned into an everyday thing.
"I don't know the answer, Fiona, but I lived at Idlewild for three years, and I can tell you what I think. I think Mary was there before the school was. I think she is part of that place—that she was part of it before the first building was even built. We were in her home. I don't know what shape she took before the school was built, but it's what she does—takes shapes, shows you things, makes you hear things. I have no doubt that she was a real person at some point, but now she's an echo."
"You could have found all this stuff out yourself, you know." "I know," Fiona replied, and she felt herself smiling at him. "But it's more fun to get information from you."
He knew who she was. Of course he did. If he didn't know she was Malcolm Sheridan's daughter, dating a fellow cop, she'd eat her journalism diploma.
Fiona looked at him. Jamie: tall, broad shoulders, dark blond hair worn slightly long and brushed back from his forehead, scruff of gold on his jaw. She'd missed him—but when Jamie wore his uniform, he was less familiar to her, less like the man who had first said Hi to her in a bar on a Friday night. The uniform did that, made him a different man.
This close to Christmas, very few families visited; mostly girls got a visit home during the holidays, at least briefly, which made the December visit extraneous. You wouldn't want to see your daughters too much, CeCe thought with unfamiliar bitterness. How awful that would be, especially when you took the trouble to send them away.
Lighting a fire under the cops was his God-given talent.
"I hope no one is going to be sick," Anthony said. He was standing next to CeCe, watching the coffin come out of the ground, and he was clearly talking about himself.
Letzte Worte
Die Informationen stammen von der englischen "Wissenswertes"-Seite.Ändern, um den Eintrag der eigenen Sprache anzupassen.
And then there was nothing but the windblown field, the blank winter sky, the breath of cold wind. And silence.
Literaturhinweise zu diesem Werk aus externen Quellen.
Wikipedia auf Englisch
Keine
▾Buchbeschreibungen
More than sixty years after one of four friends in a reputedly haunted boarding school goes missing, journalist Fiona Sheridan resolves to learn her sister's fate before a harrowing discovery is made.
Vermont, 1950: There's a place for the girls whom no one wants: the troublemakers, the illegitimate, the too smart for their own good. It's called Idlewild Hall. And in the small town of Barrons, there are rumors that the boarding school is haunted. Four roommates bond over their whispered fears-- until one of them mysteriously disappears. 2014: Journalist Fiona Sheridan cannot stop revisiting the events surrounding her older sister's death twenty years earlier; Deb's body was found lying in the overgrown fields near the ruins of Idlewild Hall. Now the Hall is being restored by an anonymous benefactor, and shocking secrets are uncovered-- secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the past ... and a voice that won't be silenced.
Google Books — Lädt ...
(4)
3
Content:
Idlewild Hall had been a boarding school for girls, sent away by their families. Finally closed around 1979 and since abandoned, the new owners want to restore it and reopen the house as a new, modern school.
Young Journalist Fiona Sheridan has her own bitter memories connected with the Idlewild property, as twenty years ago her sister Deb had been found dead on the former sports field. Although Tim, her sister’s boyfriend, had been sentenced, for Fiona there are still lots of very unclear details and open questions. She wants to write an article about Idlewild Hall and starts her own researches. When the renovation team finds the remains of the body of a young girl, dead for more than sixty years and definitely murdered, she digs deep into the past of Idlewild Hall. Who was Mary Hand?
Theme and genre:
This dark and atmospheric story is written in the perfect tradition of the famous Gothic fiction originated in England in the second half of the 18th and the 19th century. There are female heroines, four girls in 1950 and Fiona in 2014, a ghost and darkness and mysteries. Topic are the living conditions of for different reasons unwanted girls in the early 60ies, but also female friendship, tenacity and courage, now and then. Another topic are grieve and loss and the Holocaust.
Characters:
Fiona is likeable, because although her questions are soon getting dangerous for her, she is not willing to stop and give up. 1950, in the dark, cold surrounding of Idlewild School, four girls, Katie, Roberta, CeCe and Sonia are best friends, holding together against everything.
Plot and writing:
The story takes place in Barrons, Vermont. There are two timelines, the fifties with each chapter focusing on one of the four girls and 2014, with details going back to 1994. Both timelines are gripping und breathtaking, with surprising twists and turns. Especially historical facts connected to Sophie´s story were thoroughly researched.
Conclusion:
A dark, atmospheric novel in the tradition of the famous English Gothic literature, gripping and full of suspense. A perfect pageturner, sleepless nights included. (