Love Penelope & Jack. ( )

Angel Stark is giving a reading from her book, “All My Pretty Friends” at Buy The Book bookshop. It’s a true crime story that took place among the East coast Newport rich kids. A crowd Angel had been part of. The turnout is packed and sales are sky high, during the book signing afterwards.

There is a fracas after the signing, between the author and an attendee. The sister of the murdered victim is present and isn’t happy about the book. The murder has never been found and the sister felt the book is damaging to her sister and their family.

The next day Angel is nowhere to be found. She had left the bookshop with a local fellow, and both are missing! A little later her body is found. Angel has been murdered in the same way the person in her true crime book was. In the investigation, some of the history of the fellow puts him in the #1 spot for suspect.

Bookshop owner, Penelope, takes up her own investigation of the case along with her secret mentor — PI Jack Shepard. Jack was murdered in the bookshop building in the 1940s and his ghost now haunts the building. Penelope is the only one who knows of him. Between Shepard’s hard-boiled PI persona and past experiences, and Penelope’s desire to catch the killer, this is a fun read. Think “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” only with murder involved. ( )

I just can’t help loving these little quirky stories. And I still find Jack Shephard extremely appealing for a ghost. I did not find the story itself as interesting as the previous book but I like the way the characters are developing. ( )

Penelope has another author in her store and guess what? She ends up dead, only this time not in the store. Penelope decides, along with Jack, that she needs to solve the murder so none of her friends are railroaded like she almost was last book. So she starts sleuthing again and getting in trouble.

I like Penelope and Jack. There are some twists in her relationship with Jack that I really liked. He is training her and she is getting to understand his 1940's lingo. I like how Jack pushes Penelope, not only with the sleuthing but also with loosening up with her son. I like the townspeople that Penelope has gathered around her. I also am enjoying some of the romances that are in the beginning stages. Her in-laws are jerks and I'm glad see stood up to them.

I am looking forward to the rest of the series. ( )

When young widow Penelope Thornton-McClure moved her son and her life to a small town in Rhode Island, she knew things were going to be different. She just didn't realize how different, until the ghost of a 1940's gumshoe named Jack Shepard entered her life. Now Jack has helped Penelope realize that she's stronger than she thought and can face things she never thought possible - including the onslaught of her wealthy in-laws, who have been doing their best to run roughshod over her for years, and she's finding a new world opening up...

When a young author named Angel Stark arrives at Pen's bookstore for a promotion on her new book, Pen doesn't expect things to get heated. But she should have, considering the book is about a dead debutante named Bethany Banks whose murder is still unsolved. When Angel is attacked outside the store and local boy Johnny Napp arrives to help, Pen doesn't realize that when Johnny leaves with Angel it will unleash a slew of events that will bring Bethany's last night on earth back to the forefront; and that there's more story yet to be told, and Johnny might not only be who he says he is, but have a decidedly bigger role in it.

But when Angel disappears, along with Bethany's sister Victoria, the past comes back to haunt everyone involved, and Pen may need Jack's help more than she thinks in order to keep an innocent man from being wrongfully put away forever...

When Angel's book comes out there's obviously people who don't like it; namely, those that are participants in the story. All of them are from wealthy backgrounds and thus far have been able to protect themselves from the notoriety of murder. Yet the book promises to lay bare the details of the gruesome night Bethany was found strangled, and someone is obviously guilty.

But when Angel herself first has run-ins with several people - the dead girl's sister, for one - and then is later found murdered in a similar manner, it's obvious someone wanted to make sure this was her first and last book. But since Johnny is the main suspect, Pen feels that she needs to find the truth, because he's been dating her clerk Mina she thinks someone has it all wrong. So she enlists Jack to help her seek the real killer since it seems the police are focusing only on one person.

This is the second book in the Haunted Bookshop series, and I can honestly say that I loved it just as much as the first. Penelope is beginning to accept Jack's presence in her life, and even depend on him when the need arises. She's also becoming a stronger, more resilient person, and I really like that.

I also love the dream sequences where Penelope is able to travel backward in time to Jack's world; it's always for a purpose - to help her figure out things in her own world. I'm not going to lie; I really love that period of time, being a huge classic film buff myself, and any time I find a book that can pull me into it, I'm loving every second of it. This series is able to do just that, and I relish it.

When the ending comes and the murderer is revealed, it's more a sense of justice that is felt than any evildoing on the part of the murderer, and that's fine by me. The writing is taut, the words flow, the story is well-told and I marvel at the fact that the author(s) can take us to the past so easily and make it believable. My only hope would be that when this series does make its final episode that somehow, those 'higher ups' as it were, would find that Jack is worthy of being given a second chance in life. After all, miracles happen every day if you just look around, and this would be no different. Recommended. ( )