Thursday, March 26, 2009

The Wandering Heart-Mary Malloy

The Wandering Heart
Mary Malloy
Leapfrog Press, Apr 2009, $15.99
ISBN: 9780981514857

St. Patrick's College history professor Elizabeth "Lizzie" Manning is on her winter break when British Lord George F.R. Hatton asks her to assess his family’s special artifacts collected by an ancestor Lieutenant Francis Hatton who sailed with James Cook on his third Pacific exploration. Excited, Lizzie leaves Charlestown, Massachusetts to look at the collection at the aristocrat’s Hengemont, Somerset, England estate.

As she catalogues the treasure, Lizzie learns of the Hatton family curse. Every female Elizabeth Hatton commits suicide. Only George’s mentally disturbed sister Bette remains alive from this generation. As she digs deeper into the Hatton family history, Lizzie begins to find disturbing evidence that she might be a Hatton. Worse she begins to see terrifying visions that make her wonder if she is the next victim.

THE WANDERING HEART is a fabulous thriller starring a historian heroine who looks back in time over the centuries to various eras seeking what happened to numerous Elizabeth Hatton. Thus the reader obtains a modern psychological tale with strong implications of horror from an alleged curse dating back to the Crusades. As Lizzie begins to understand what has happened in each century since medieval times, she starts to believe she is the current doomed one, but readers will wonder if an artifact is causing a family curse or if it is a self fulfilling prophecy as Mary Malloy provides a terrific tense thriller.

Harriet Klausner

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