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NEWS
NEWS OF WESTERN LIGHTS NUMBER TWELVE
The projected twelfth volume of the Western Lights series, Rose of Picardy, currently is in preparation. The story is centered around the misty, marshy river town of Tillington, in the south of Fenshire. Like all Western Lights books the novel is part fantasy, part mystery, with a host of colorful characters, and scenes to match. There is for example the charming neighborhood of Cottage Row, with its old gabled street dozing under its canopy of pines; the ancient and venerable posting-inn known as the Cat and Checkers; the Spurtown training stables in nearby Beeworthy, preparing racers for the fabled Slopshire Cup; a forbidding hillside ruin deep in the marshes, Locksley Hall, deserted now because its former inhabitants are said to have all gone mad; and the old plank bridge that once spanned the River Fribble but was taken down years ago, and so isn't there any more -- and yet from time to time it seems it is there -- or isn't there -- or is it . . .?
NEWS OF WESTERN LIGHTS NUMBER ELEVEN (2021)
When Captain Robert Surtees of Falaise found he had lost his livelihood and his beloved ship the Lady Jane after a downturn in the coasting trade, his only recourse was to an inheritance left him years earlier by a maiden aunt. That inheritance was Hooting Grange, a rambling old wilderness of a country manse in the Tillington Road, on the far outskirts of Market Snailsby in Fenshire. With its vast, walled perimeter, steep roofs and clumps of twisted chimneys, the Grange was a sight to behold. And "Ramshackle Great Place" -- the captain's name for the house in his youth -- had a reputation to match. Workmen refused to work in it, housekeepers disliked keeping house in it, because, as people whispered, "there was something wrong with the place" -- despite their affection for the captain's kindly aunt, Miss Belle Normand, who lived there.
Five years now have passed since Miss Normand mysteriously vanished on the road, while traveling to a nearby town to consult a medical specialist for her condition. Her nephew has moved into the Grange, and already trouble has reared its head. Worse yet, according to a provision of his aunt's will Captain Surtees is prohibited from selling the Grange or any part of it or its acres, and so has no practical means of recovering his former life.
In the eleventh volume of his acclaimed Western Lights series of fantasy-mysteries, author Jeffrey E. Barlough returns to the scene and times of Bertram of Butter Cross, in a whimsical tale of the captain who had lost a ship but gained a . . .?
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Source: Gresham & Doyle
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