Audio Book Review: BURNT MOUNTAIN by Anne Rivers Siddons; read by Kate Reading

BURNT MOUNTAIN

by Anne Rivers Siddons

read by Kate Reading

 Pub. Date: July 2011

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Format: Compact Disc

ISBN-13: 9781607882497

ISBN: 1607882493

Description (from the publisher):

From one of our most acclaimed writers comes this dramatic tale of a well-born Southern woman whose life is forever changed by the betrayal of her mother and by the man she loves.

Growing up, the only place tomboy Thayer Wentworth felt at home was at her summer camp - Camp Sherwood Forest in the North Carolina Mountains. It was there that she came alive and where she met Nick Abrams, her first love...and first heartbreak.

Years later, Thayer marries Aengus, an Irish professor, and they move into her deceased grandmother's house in Atlanta, only miles from Camp Edgewood on Burnt Mountain where her father died years ago in a car accident. There, Aengus and Thayer lead quiet and happy lives until Aengus is invited up to the camp to tell old Irish tales to the campers. As Aengus spends less time at home and becomes more distant, Thayer must confront dark secrets-about her mother, her first love, and, most devastating of all, her husband.

My Rating: 2 Perplexed Stars out of 5

My Thoughts: I'm perplexed. Though I suppose I shouldn't be. Before I began listening to the audio version of BURNT MOUNTAIN by Anne Rivers Siddons, I was somewhat aware that it wasn't receiving great reviews. I try to avoid reading actual reviews before I begin a book myself because I don't want to be influenced or encounter any spoilers. I might get a feel for the general popularity of a title without learning any particulars. In the case of BURNT MOUNTAIN, I thought the storyline sounded interesting, and I've enjoyed the author's work in the past, so I plunged on in (much like the kids pictured on the cover!).

I found most of BURNT MOUNTAIN to be very enjoyable. Siddons takes her time laying out the backstory of her lead character, Thayer Wentworth. Descriptions of Thayer's privileged though troubled childhood are detailed and lush. Thayer and her mother, Crystal, don't have much fondness for one another, but she's able to compensate because she connects so well with her father (whose character Crystal has never fully appreciated) and with her paternal grandmother, Grand, who sees something of herself in Thayer. Crystal is dissatisfied that she hasn't been able to achieve the social standing to which she always aspired and is somewhat bitter and resentful that her marriage into the prestigious Wentworth family hasn't provided the exaltation she craves. What she can't achieve for herself, she hopes to secure for her daughters - whether they want it or not. Sometimes the interplay between Crystal and Grand is quite amusing. Grand has no delusions about Crystal's values and occasionally enjoys thwarting and subtly taunting her. However, even Grand's cleverness and financial advantages cannot protect Thayer from her mother's selfish and dark scheming. If this were a fairy tale, Crystal would be cast as the evil stepmother.

The problems I had with BURNT MOUNTAIN have their beginnings at about the halfway mark after Thayer's heart is broken just before she begins college. During her final semester, after four years of living in a sort of shell-shocked bubble, she falls quickly and deeply in love with Aengus, a professor of Celtic folklore. From that point on, Siddons seems to have lost control of the story. The plot takes a very dark turn and, frankly, I wasn't sure if we were dealing with obsession turned to madness, pedophilia, the supernatural, or a combination of all three! Then, suddenly, what should be a rather spectacular denouement falls flat, the story is wrapped up in a very unsatisfying epilogue, and that's all she wrote!

I was quite literally left scratching my head and saying "Huhhh??" Not only do I not understand the ending of the story but I'm also wondering about the author. Did she become ill and rush through the ending? Did she just lose interest? Was there a falling out with the publisher, agent . . . Did someone else finish writing this book for her?  What happened?! I'm concerned for her. And I'm very disappointed.

This book is just not up to Siddons' usual standards. If Anne Rivers Siddons is a new author for you, I would recommend that you read one of her other titles, several of which I've enjoyed. Regrettably, I cannot recommend BURNT MOUNTAIN.

Regarding the work of the reader, Kate Reading, I thought she was wonderful, and I have no criticisms whatsoever. I found the timber of her voice to be pleasant, her ability to slip into a variety of accents impressive, and her pacing spot on. I'm learning that when it comes to audio books, I have favorite readers just as I have favorite authors. Kate Reading is definitely on my Favs List.

Click here to listen to a sample.

Click here to read an excerpt.

About the author (from the publisher):

Anne Rivers Siddons is one of America’s most beloved novelists. A New York Times bestselling author, she has written sixteen previous novels: Sweetwater Creek, Islands, Nora Nora, Low Country, Up Island, Fault Lines, Downtown, Hill Towns, Colony, Outer Banks, King’s Oak, Peachtree Road, Homeplace, Fox’s Earth, The House Next Door, and Heartbreak Hotel. She is also the author of a work of nonfiction, John Chancellor Makes Me Cry.  OFF SEASON, was released in August 2008. She and her husband, Heyward, split their time between their homes in South Carolina and Maine.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this audio book for review purposes only. I have not received any form of compensation in exchange for my honest opinion.

Book Review #51: BACKSEAT SAINTS (audiobook) by Joshilyn Jackson

BACKSEAT SAINTS

by Joshilyn Jackson

read by the author

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Category: Fiction

Format: Audio Book

Subformat: CD (Audio)

Edition: Unabridged

Publish Date: 6/8/2010

Price: $34.98/$41.98

ISBN: 9781607882220

Pages: 0

Description (from the publisher):
Rose Mae Lolley is a fierce and dirty girl, long-suppressed under flowery skirts and bow-trimmed ballet flats. As "Mrs. Ro Grandee" she's trapped in a marriage that's thick with love and sick with abuse. Her true self has been bound in the chains of marital bliss in rural Texas, letting "Ro" make eggs, iron shirts, and take her punches. She seems doomed to spend the rest of her life battered outside by her husband and inside by her former self, until fate throws her in the path of an airport gypsy---one who shares her past and knows her future. The tarot cards foretell that Rose's beautiful, abusive husband is going to kill her. Unless she kills him first.

Hot-blooded Rose Mae escapes from under Ro's perky compliance and emerges with a gun and a plan to beat the hand she's been dealt. Following messages that her long-missing mother has left hidden for her in graffiti and behind paintings, Rose and her dog Gretel set out from Amarillo, TX back to her hometown of Fruiton, AL, and then on to California, unearthing a host of family secrets as she goes. Running for her life, she realizes that she must face her past in order to overcome her fate---death by marriage---and become a girl who is strong enough to save herself from the one who loves her best.

BACKSEAT SAINTS will dazzle readers with a fresh and heartwrenching portrayal of the lengths a mother will go to right the wrongs she's created, and how far a daughter will go to escape the demands of forgiveness. With the seed of a minor character from her popular best-seller, GODS IN ALABAMA, Jackson has built a whole new story full of her trademark sly wit, endearingly off-kilter characters, and utterly riveting plot twists.

My Rating: 5 out of 5 Supernova Stars - Flawless

My Thoughts:
Listening to BACKSEAT SAINTS was the most perfect audiobook experience. Beautifully read by the author, employing a variety of spot-on accents, the story of Rose Mae Lolley fighting for her survival is riveting. I tried to restrict my listening to my daily commutes, but it was impossible. First, Rose Mae spoiled me for any print book I tried to read. I abandoned book after book because her voice was so strong, so insistent, that she overshadowed any other characters I attempted to befriend. Then I found myself unwilling to leave my car on arrival at either work or home. I just wanted to keep on listening as Rose Mae mined her own past in an attempt to carve out a new present and hopefully, a future. Finally, I just gave up on everything else and listened to the story every chance I could get, bringing discs inside to listen to in the evenings as I lay in bed in the dark and back out to the car for the ride into work in the morning. Lunch breaks were spent eating sandwiches in my passenger seat, listening as Joshilyn Jackson brought Rose Mae to life -- as precarious as that life may be.

As the story opens, Rose Mae, deep into her alter ego of Mrs. Ro Grandee, wife of the oldest son of a prominent Amarillo family, is contemplating the murder of her husband, Thom. She's convinced that after 5 years of an abusive marriage, it has come down to either him or her. The narrative meanders back and forth between Rose Mae's childhood, marred by the abandonment of her mother and the abuse of her father, and the years of her marriage, building the tension brick by brick and filling in the gaps with a mortar of enlightening anecdotes. Without ever justifying Thom's abusive behavior, or even Rose Mae's many bad choices, the author illuminates the complexity of violent domestic relationships and how its effects ripple out through generations. Rose Mae begins to question her own complicity as she struggles to understand and exorcise what she considers a bad seed deep within her. It's an absolutely fascinating account of an abused woman grappling with self-awareness and empowerment.

In Jackson's earlier novel, GODS IN ALABAMA, Rose Mae Lolley was a minor character. There is some crossover of other characters as well. I hadn't read GODS. . ., and I'm actually glad that I hadn't. I didn't have any preconceived opinions about characters who appear in both novels, and that heightened the experience for me -- I didn't know what to expect; I didn't know if Rose Mae's descriptions of them were accurate or if they were distorted by her romanticism or rage. I do have a copy of GODS. . . on order, and I can't wait to hear it, though I find it hard to believe it will have as powerful an impact as BACKSEAT SAINTS.

If you're not a fan of audiobooks, you might want to make an exception for BACKSEAT SAINTS. First of all, Jackson does a stunning job with a variety of accents and personalities -- she is a trained actor. She gives Rose Mae a charming and endearing voice which often belies the horror of the scenes she is describing. It can be difficult to listen to the descriptions of a woman being beaten, and I often found myself gnawing on my own knuckles. Frankly, I don't know if I would have been able to read some of the scenes -- it would have been too easy to just skip over them. However, by listening to this story rather than reading it, I was able to hear what I otherwise may have chosen not to see. 

I strongly recommend BACKSEAT SAINTS. It's breathtaking and flawless.

Today is the last day to enter my giveaway for audiobook copies. Click here to enter.  (Comments on this review post will not be considered entries.)

Click here to listen to an excerpt.

Click here to access the Reading Group Guide.

Click here to visit the author's website.

About the author (from the publisher):
Joshilyn Jackson, a native of the Deep South, has worked as an actor and an award-winning teacher, and is now a writer and a mother of two. She is the author of GODS IN ALABAMA; BETWEEN, GEORGIA; and THE GIRL WHO STOPPED SWIMMING. Jackson lives with her husband and children outside of Atlanta. Visit her at http://www.joshilynjackson.com/.

Book Giveaway and Review #50: THE SECRETS OF NEWBERRY by Victor McGlothin

CLOSED.

Thanks to the generous folks at
Hachette Book Group,

I have been authorized to
 give away three (3) copies of

THE SECRETS OF NEWBERRY
by Victor McGlothin.

Rules for entering this giveaway
are at the bottom of this post.

THE SECRETS OF NEWBERRY

by Victor McGlothin

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Category: Fiction

Format: Trade Paperback

Publish Date: 6/21/2010

Price: $13.99/$16.99

ISBN: 9780446178136

Pages: 384

Size: 5-1/4" x 8"

Description (from the back cover):

1950 New Orleans couldn't be sweeter for Ivory "Bones" Arcineaux and Hampton Bynote. Friends since meeting at an illegal gambling house outside Newberry, Louisiana, they indulge themselves with all the fine women, good food, and wild nights they can handle. All seems good in N'awlins-especially for Hampton, who plans to make a clean break from riotous living after falling for the woman of his dreams, classy Magnolia Holiday. But the love of a good woman may not be enough to pull Hampton from the brink of disaster when his pal Bones murders a white city councilman during a simple robbery gone wrong.

Now with the local police and the FBI hot on their trails, Hampton and Bones must decide whether friendship is worth losing their freedom-and possibly their lives.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars - Good but slightly flawed.

My Thoughts:  I had more than a little trouble settling on a rating for this book, most likely because despite what I view as some pretty obvious flaws, I still liked this book. THE SECRETS OF NEWBERRY is a deceptively ambitious novel, and I think it just gets away from the author.  For the most part, I enjoyed the book while I was reading it but, once I was finished and considered it as a whole, I was frustrated and a little disappointed. I ended up with a lot of questions. On the other hand, I think it's a worthwhile, entertaining, and provocative read. It could certainly generate some good discussions.

Most of the story is set in 1950's Jim Crow era in and around New Orleans and is told from the point of view of Hampton Bynote, a young black man who has been banned from the plantation where his family has been sharecropping for generations -- actually, since slavery was abolished. He doesn't mind too much because he wants more of life than what sharecropping can provide, and he's still able to sneak onto the plantation to visit his family. When he's in the city, he dabbles in crime as a means of survival but doesn't want to get too deep into the life. Things change drastically when he meets up with Ivory "Bones" Arcineaux. Bones is of mixed race, mostly passing as white for safety and convenience while his loyalties are firmly placed within the black community. He has the potential to be a fascinating character, but the focus of the story is not on him and, as the story progresses, his character actually loses dimension. Unfortunately for the story, I believe his character and his motivations are too integral not to be explored more thoroughly.

Meanwhile, Hampton is a nice young guy, rather naive, who just wants to live a little before finding the perfect woman and settling down. He fully intends to lead a good life -- just not quite yet. He falls victim to Bones' manipulations and, for most of the story, it's arguable whether Bones will save Hampton or destroy him.

Actually, there are quite a few victims in THE SECRETS OF NEWBERRY.  Back on the plantation, life hasn't progressed all that much since the era of slavery. It's revealed very early on in the story that the black women sharecroppers have entered into secret sexual relationships with the white plantation owners throughout the entire town, what is referred to as a "Gentlemen's Agreement," and the women believe this somehow protects the lives of their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons. It was difficult for me to accept the premise that this secret has been successfully kept from the black men for generations. Both Hampton's mother and his sister, Pearl Lee, have become entangled in this agreement. What is hinted at and never fully explored, are the complex and conflicting feelings the women possess toward their secret "lovers" in particular and the agreement in general.

There are other victims of sexual abuse as well, far too many for this novel to address in a satisfactory manner. The frequent instances of abuse may be true-to-life, but in the circumstances of this novel, it strains believability and, therefore, detracts from the horror that is suffered.

So, what did I like about THE SECRETS OF NEWBERRY and why would I recommend it? I liked both Pearl Lee and Magnolia, a young girl who sets her mind and heart on Hampton and won't let go. I also liked Hampton. I was probably most satisfied with the development of Magnolia's character. She arrives on the scene as a seemingly wide-eyed innocent, but she's a pretty spunky young woman with a keen eye on everything going on around her. She's determined, knows what she wants, and knows how to go after it.  The novel holds a rich cast of secondary characters, and I enjoyed observing their interactions and the various ways they handled conflict and adversity, as well as good fortune.

I also liked the glimpse into this complicated historical era - right on the cusp of the civil rights movement. You could see America changing, one person at a time. Some people were holdouts - some of the most steadfast holdouts grew by leaps and bounds at the last possible moment. Some just got meaner.

I liked the author's writing style - it's clean, straightforward, and very discriptive. The reader experiences the essence of the time and place, the voice of each character is distinctive. I liked the pace of the storytelling - threads are unwound slowly and leisurely - until toward then end when everything feels too rushed.

THE SECRETS OF NEWBERRY would have been a better book if it had been more tightly written.  Kind of like this review!

So, enter the contest, and judge this book for yourself.

About the author (from the publisher):

Essence bestselling author Victor McGlothin is a former bank vice-president who nearly forfeited an athletic scholarship due to poor reading skills. Ultimately, he overcame that obstacle and later completed a Masters degree in Human Relations & Business. Victor is also an on-line columnist of Victor Said?, a real Brotha to Sistah look at relationship.

Victor lives in Dallas with his wife and two sons.

Click here to visit the author's website.

RULES FOR ENTERING THE GIVEAWAY:

• Leave a comment on this post telling me you would like to win. Include an email address with your comment so that I can contact you if you do win. Use a spam-thwarting format such as geebee.reads AT gmail DOT com or geebee.reads [at] gmail [dot] com

• You must leave an email address in order to qualify. If I can't contact you, you can't win!

• You can earn an extra entry by being or becoming a Follower or Subscriber of this blog and telling me about it in a separate comment.

• Blog about this contest and provide me with the link to the post in a separate comment, and I'll give you yet another entry.

• Tweeting about this contest and providing me the link in a separate comment will get you one more entry. I've added a Retweet button at the bottom of every post.

• Stumble this blog, Digg it, or Technorati Fave it, whatever, and leave a separate comment for another entry.

• Winners must provide a U.S. or Canadian street address. Hachette is unable to deliver to P.O. Boxes.

• Deadline for entry is 11:59 p.m. EST on Friday, August 6, 2010.

• Winners will have 48 hours to respond to my email announcing that they have won; if I don't hear from a winner, I will draw another name.

Thank you to Valerie
at Hachette Book Group

for making this giveaway possible.

GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!

Thank you to Hachette Book Group for my review copy of this book.

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED.

My Favorite Reads #6: PRODIGAL SUMMER by Barbara Kingsolver

Alyce of At Home with Books hosts My Favorite Reads, a weekly feature spotlighting favorite reads from pre-blogging days. Because it's been a while since the books were read, these posts are not reviews per se, but rather impressionistic remembrances of a positive reading experience. I think of this feature as an opportunity to more deeply explore the range of my reading interests and those of other book bloggers and readers of book blogs outside of the current crop of new releases.

Do you have an old favorite that you'd like to share?

PRODIGAL SUMMER
by Barbara Kingsolver

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Pub. Date: October 2001
ISBN-13: 9780060959036
Sales Rank: 5,072
464pp

Description (from the publisher):
Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia. From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off-guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and confounds her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land that has become her own. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly, feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the possibilities of a future neither of them expected.

Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes the countryside, these characters find their connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with whom they share a place. With the complexity that characterizes Barbara Kingsolver's finest work, Prodigal Summer embraces pure thematic originality and demonstrates a balance of narrative, drama, and ideas that render it an inspiring work of fiction.
Why I Chose This Book:

This is absolutely one of my all-time favorite books, and high summer is the perfect time to read it. PRODIGAL SUMMER is bursting with love, life, hope, and redemption. And if I didn't already love it enough on its own merits, it's special to me because I actually met Barbara Kingsolver around the time she might have been working on this novel.

As I drive along the highway every day and drink up the sight of dreamy wild chicory and vibrant orange tiger lilies along the roadside, I think of the summer of 1998 which I spent in Abingdon, Virginia. Abingdon, for those of you who don't know, is located in the southwestern corner of Virginia, close to both North Carolina and Kentucky, high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and surely one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

One day, my sister took me to a nursery just over the line in Kentucky. Being at least the middle of July and between summer and fall plantings, the huge greenhouse was deserted except for my sister and me, a couple of employees, and one other lady with a young girl in tow. At some point, I realised the woman looked a lot like Barbara Kingsolver but, of course, I wasn't sure. I remembered that she had grown up in Kentucky and often visited. Then I saw her southwestern beaded belt -- it said "Arizona" or "Tucson" -- I can't remember which. I knew Barbara Kingsolver lived in Tucson -- for a long time, so had I. It had to be her! I screwed up my courage and introduced myself. No, I didn't get a photo of us together or even her autograph. The little girl looked about 6 years old, and I didn't want to intrude on what was most likely their mother-daughter time. Besides, I'm embarrassed to say I was way too intimidated (and incredibly hot in that greenhouse!) and my mind went blank, and I'm lucky if I didn't say something incredibly silly. A couple of years later, when the book came out, I realized the coincidence of the timing, and if she wasn't actually working on the book when we met, surely it was gestating.

So that was my brush with celebrity. When it comes to the the book itself, PRODIGAL SUMMER, I think you should hop on over to Fyrefly's Book Blog and read her beautifully written "love letter to Prodigal Summer" which she wrote last October. She says everything I could hope to say much better than I could hope to say it. And then if you haven't read PRODIGAL SUMMER, go read it, or read it again!

About the author(from the publisher):

Equally at home with poetry, novels, and nonfiction narratives, Barbara Kingsolver credits her careers in scientific writing and journalism with instilling in her a love of nature, a writer's discipline, and a strong sense of social justice.
Click here to visit the author's website.
Click here to read an excerpt from Chapter One.
Visit Reading in Appalachia where Icedream has spotlighted the Barbara Kingsolver's November release in her Waiting on Wednesday post.

My Favorite Reads #5: SAME PLACE, SAME THINGS: Stories by Tim Gautreaux

Alyce of At Home with Books hosts My Favorite Reads, a weekly feature spotlighting favorite reads from pre-blogging days. Because it's been a while since the books were read, these posts are not reviews per se, but rather impressionistic remembrances of a positive reading experience. I think of this feature as an opportunity to more deeply explore the range of my reading interests and those of other book bloggers and readers of book blogs outside of the current crop of new releases.

Do you have an old favorite that you'd like to share?

SAME PLACE, SAME THINGS: STORIES
by Tim Gautreaux

Publisher: Picador
Pub. Date: August 1997
ISBN-13: 9780312169947
Sales Rank: 173,952
224pp
Edition Description: REV
Edition Number: 1

Synopsis(from the publisher):

In this collection of stories, Tim Gautreaux chronicles the lives of "ordinary" people who face extraordinary circumstances and decisions: a farmer faced with the prospect of raising his infant granddaughter; a young man who falls in love with a voice on the radio; a train engineer who causes a colossal disaster. In stories filled with heart and humor, event and consequence, the customs and culture of Louisiana come to life in the hands of a writer who blends rare talent with an even more unusual humanity.

Why I chose this book:

I love reading short stories, and there have been times in my life when that was pretty much all I read. I probably "discovered" Tim Gautreaux sometime around 1996 or 1997, shortly before this collection debuted. It might have been through THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES series or The Oxford American, both of which I used to devour. I recall being really excited to learn that there was soon to be a whole book of his work.

I may be a bit old-fashioned, but I like a story to have a beginning, a middle, and an end; I like to come away feeling as though an issue has been confronted and not just exposed. I want someone or something in the story to be transformed. The stories in this collection meet that criteria. Through description and dialogue, they also evoke a strong sense of place - rural Louisiana. And when it comes to capturing the musical cadence of the Cajun dialect, Gautreaux is a master.

I breezed right through these stories and then read them all again. I talked about the stories to everyone I knew. I gave copies of the collection as gifts. I carried my copy around with me in order to be near them. I just loved these stories.

Read a sample chapter from Tim Gautreaux's second collection of short stories, WELDING WITH CHILDREN, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 2000.

About the author:

Tim Gautreaux has written three novels and two collections of short stories, one of which, Welding With Children, was selected by The New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year. His fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, GQ, and Zoetrope, and also in volumes of The O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, and New Stories from the South. He is a professor emeritus/writer in residence in the English Department at Southeastern Louisiana University.

My Favorite Reads #3: THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR by Anne Rivers Siddons

THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR
by Anne Rivers Siddons

From the jacket flap (Stephen King Horror Library edition):

The house next door to Colquitt and Walter Kennedy is haunted by an all-pervasive evil – an evil that takes away whatever the occupants hold dearest. The Kennedys are about to become witnesses to an overwhelming force that will strip away the veneer of the civilized Atlanta suburb that surrounds and protects them.

A stunning feat of architectural imagination and skill, the house is built for the Harralsons – newly married, rich, and expecting a baby. They become the first victims of an all-engulfing force they cannot comprehend. But the tragedy of the Harralsons is only the beginning, for the fabric of the Kennedys' lives is also ripped apart. And when the Sheehans move in next door, the house destroys them too. But it is from the Greenes that it will take the ultimate prize.

The Kennedys alone understand the subtle, awful toll the house extracts. Their warnings go unheeded, their fears are dismissed, and it seems that if they are to survive they must themselves destroy the house. But it is something more than they know, this extraordinary evil, and they must either be embraced by it or die.

In his Introduction to this exclusive Stephen King Horror Library edition, Stephen King favorably compares author Anne Rivers Siddons to the long tradition of Southern gothic writers who came before her: “The stuff underneath, the stuff which makes the heart of this novel pulse with such tremendous crude strength, is the Old South.”

Why I Chose This Book:

Reason #1: I loved this book.

Reason #2: The Introduction to this edition is written by Stephen King.

Reason #3: I bought this book on the "recommendation" of Stephen King.

Reason #4: I thought it would be fun to feature a different side of Anne Rivers Siddons, especially since I'm currently hosting a giveaway for her book, OFF SEASON. First published in 1978, THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR is classic Southern Gothic.

Reason #5: I think Stephen King liked it.

Click here to read an excerpt from Chapter One . . . If you dare . . .

About the author (from the publisher):
Anne Rivers Siddons was born in a small railroad town just south of Atlanta, where her family has lived for six generations. She attended Auburn University and later joined the staff of Atlanta magazine. Her first novel, Heartbreak Hotel, a story of her college days at Auburn, was later made into a movie called Heart of Dixie, starring Ally Sheedy. Since then she has written fifteen more novels, many of which have been bestsellers. Recently, a movie version of her later novel The House Next Door was aired on LifeTime Network. Ms. Siddons now divides her time between Atlanta and Brooklin, Maine.

Alyce of At Home with Books hosts a weekly feature spotlighting favorite reads from pre-blogging days. Because it's been a while since the books were read, these posts are not reviews per se, but rather impressionistic remembrances of a positive reading experience. I think of this feature as an opportunity to more deeply explore the range of my reading interests and those of other book bloggers and readers of book blogs outside of the current crop of new releases.

Do you have an old favorite that you'd like to share?