The Ghost Clause


Book Description

It's been several months since Simon Inescort had a heart attack and keeled over the rail of a Nova Scotia-bound ferry. His widow, Lorca Pell, sold their farmhouse to newlyweds Zachary and Muriel after revealing that the deed contains a 'ghost clause, ' an actual legal clause, not unheard of in Vermont, allowing for reimbursement if a recently purchased home turns out to be haunted. In fact, Simon finds himself still at home, replaying his marriage in his own mind, while also engaging in occasionally intimate observation of the new homeowners. When a child goes missing the Green Mountain Agency assigns Zachary, their rookie detective, but the case threatens the couple's domestic equilibrium. -- adapted from jacket




The Family Clause


Book Description

“The son did as he was told. All his bloody life, he has done as he has been told. Time to change that, he thinks, grabbing a pen. He doesn’t write that this will be the last time his father stays here. He doesn’t write that he wants to break the father clause. Instead, he writes: Welcome, Dad. Hope you had a good flight.” A grandfather who lives abroad returns home to visit his adult children. The son is a failure. The daughter is having a baby with the wrong man. Only the grandfather is perfect—at least, according to himself. But over the course of ten intense days, relationships unfold and painful memories resurface. The grandfather is confronted by his past. The daughter is faced with an impossible choice. The son tries to write himself free. Something has to give. Per a longstanding family agreement, the grandfather has maintained his Swedish residency by coming to stay with his son every six months. Can this clause be renegotiated, or will it chain the family to its past forever? Through a series of quickly changing perspectives, in The Family Clause Jonas Hassen Khemiri evokes an intimate portrait of a chaotic and perfectly normal family, deeply wounded by the death of a child and the disappearance of a father.




Escape Clause


Book Description

No, but I do.




Ghost of Jealousy


Book Description

He spent a hundred years waiting for her. She hated him in a heartbeat. In a world where paranormals live side by side with humans, everybody knows about Ordinance 7304: the Bond Laws. Or, as the Paras snidely whisper to each other, the Claws Clause--a long and detailed set of laws that bonded couples must obey if they want their union to be recognized. Because it wasn't already damn near impossible to find a fated mate in the first place. Now the government just has to get involved... I exist-- Dodge McCoy is dead. Died more than a century ago, one of countless who never made it out of his New York City slum. And while a bullet might've ended his life, his afterlife was only just beginning. He's a ghost. A phantom. A spirit. And he's just about gone. Without his fated mate--without his "key"--Dodge will experience his second (and final) death. For years, he put off searching, mainly because he still harbors scars over the betrayal that led to his first death. In his eyes, it would be better to fade away than let another woman tear his heart to shreds. Too bad it isn't as easy as that. Turns out there's a catch that no one's ever mentioned to him before: when he dies again, so does his key. Which would be fine--if Dodge didn't know who his key was. Since he does, and he's been avoiding her for more than a decade, it doesn't seem right to take the talented beauty with him when he goes. So, using the last of his energy, he leaves the Bumptown behind in search of the one woman who could save him... I escape-- Laurel Kane is a star. America's sweetheart since she was a teen, she stepped away from the limelight at the height of her fame. Rumors swirled, gossip bloggers coming up with the most outrageous reasons why she walked away from her high-profile career. Laurel heard it all and said nothing. What could she say? That she saw dead people? She always knew that Paras were out there. In Hollywood, nearly everyone has some kind of power--there just wasn't anyone like her. Afraid she was losing her mind, she sought help and treatment, whatever it would take to stop the visions. But, just when she thought she had, right on the cusp of her comeback, he shows up. Brash. Cocky. Arrogant. A relic from the past, the century-old ghost bumps into her and, to her surprise, she actually feels it. And that's when she realizes her new sitcom might just have to be put on hold... With time running out and Death literally at their back, these two will have to get along long enough to break the curse tying them together--or else Dodge won't be the only ghost. * Ghost of Jealousy is the fourth full-length novel in the Claws Clause series. It's the story of a ghostly hero from another time and the secretive starlet who holds his life--and his heart--in her hands.




I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place


Book Description

A memoir details the haunting and redemptive events of the author's life, covering such topics as his con-man father's betrayal, the murder-suicide of a houseguest, and his decade spent in the Arctic as a translator of Inuit tales.




The Bird Artist


Book Description

Howard Norman's The Bird Artist, the first book of his Canadian trilogy, begins in 1911. Its narrator, Fabian Vas is a bird artist: He draws and paints the birds of Witless Bay, his remote Newfoundland coastal village home. In the first paragraph of his tale Fabian reveals that he has murdered the village lighthouse keeper, Botho August. Later, he confesses who and what drove him to his crime--a measured, profoundly engrossing story of passion, betrayal, guilt, and redemption between men and women. The Bird Artist is a 1994 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.




Studies of Passive Clauses


Book Description

In this work, Paul M. Postal supports the universalist theory of language by examining passive clauses. Contrary to a skeptical tradition, Postal argues that passive clauses are cross-linguistically identifiable and characterizable. This study proposes refinements of the analysis of the natural language grammatical category Passive Clause. These refinements include an account of the notion 'dummy nominal,' central to the analysis of impersonal passive clauses; additions permitting a proper typology of the major known subtypes of Passive Clause; a generalization permitting application to clauses whose subjects are not earlier level direct objects; and, construction of precise rule concepts to represent restrictions on passive clauses. The passive domain supports the universalist approach in three distinguishable ways: (1) by permitting formulation of otherwise apparently unstatable lawful characteristics of all passive structures; (2) by facilitating statement of language-specific passive constraints holding in diverse languages; and, (3) by allowing uniform statement in grammars of recurrent constraints on passives. Each mode of support is applied to actual cases based on material from more than a dozen languages from English and French to Quiche (Mayan) and Chi-Mwi:ni (Bantu).




What Is Left the Daughter


Book Description

A two-time National Book Award finalist delivers a stirring tale of the passions - tender, obsessive, even murderous - that are unleashed by a wartime love triangle. Seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents, within hours of each other, jump off two different bridges - the result of their separate involvements with the same compelling neighbor, a Halifax switchboard operator and aspiring actress. The suicides cause Wyatt to move to small-town Middle Economy to live with his uncle, aunt, and ravishing cousin Tilda. Setting in motion the novel's chain of life-altering passions and the wartime perfidy at its core is the arrival of the German student Hans Mohring, carrying only a satchel. Actual historical incidents - including a German U-boat's sinking of the Nova Scotia-Newfoundland ferry Caribou - lend intense narrative power to Norman's uncannily layered story. Wyatt's account of the astonishing events leading up to his fathering of a beloved daughter spills out twenty-one years later. What Is Left the Daughter is Howard Norman at his celebrated best.




Holy Ghost


Book Description

Virgil Flowers investigates a miracle--and a murder--in the wickedly entertaining new thriller from the master of "pure reading pleasure" (Booklist) Pinion, Minnesota: a metropolis of all of seven hundred souls, for which the word "moribund" might have been invented. Nothing ever happened there and nothing ever would--until the mayor of sorts (campaign slogan: "I'll Do What I Can") and a buddy come up with a scheme to put Pinion on the map. They'd heard of a place where a floating image of the Virgin Mary had turned the whole town into a shrine, attracting thousands of pilgrims. And all those pilgrims needed food, shelter, all kinds of crazy things, right? They'd all get rich! What could go wrong? When the dead body shows up, they find out, and that's only the beginning of their troubles--and Virgil Flowers'--as they are all about to discover all too soon.




Ghouls Just Haunt to Have Fun


Book Description

A demonic guest terrorizes a haunted hotel When ghost hunter and medium M.J. Holliday appears on a television show called Haunted Possessions, she encounters an evil knife that releases a demon. Now all hell has broken loose in the haunted hotel where M.J. is staying?and it?s up to her to give the uninvited guest an early checkout.