The Little Shop of Found Things

August 1, 2018
When Xanthe Westlake and her mother, Flora--who's been blindsided by a nasty divorce--leave London to purchase an antiques shop in Marlborough, a 17th-century silver key belt, or chatelaine, begins to sing to Xanthe, pulling her into a time-traveling mission to save a wrongly accused servant girl.Xanthe, gifted with psychometry, sometimes feels an emotional tug from the antiques she and Flora sell. Yet no artifact has sung so loudly and insistently as the chatelaine. As Xanthe clears the gardens behind their store, she discovers that the chatelaine's energy increases the closer she moves toward a strange, rounded building, which turns out to be a blind house, a jail for suspected criminals awaiting trial. Local legend says the blind house sits at the intersection of two powerful ley lines. Although Xanthe is curious about the ley lines, the overwhelming sense of anguish in the blind house concerns her until she begins to be harassed by the ghost of Margaret Merton, a woman burned at the stake for Catholic beliefs. Mistress Merton desperately needs Xanthe to use the chatelaine and blind house to travel back in time to save the life of Alice, a maidservant accused of theft. Once she falls back in time, however, Xanthe's task is complicated by the difficult machinations of a legal system that undercuts the poor, not to mention the possibilities of love with Samuel Appleby, a talented architect drawn to Xanthe's unconventional ways. Attentive to historical detail as well as beautifully delineated scenes, Brackston (The Return of the Witch, 2016, etc.) has crafted rich characters with plausible concerns: Xanthe is not simply a time-traveling woman in search of love; she has wrongfully suffered jail time herself because of her no-good, drug-addicted ex-boyfriend and worries for her feisty yet arthritic mother, saddled with frozen bank accounts. Fans of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander collection will delight in Brackston's new series and eagerly await its second installment.A bewitching tale of love across centuries.

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August 27, 2018
This first in a series from Brackston (The Witch’s Daughter) is a magnetic time-travelling adventure following a woman who travels back to 17th-century England at the request of a ghost. Xanthe Westlake and her mother, Flora, new owners of a small antique shop in Marlborough, England, attend an antique sale where she wins a bid for a chatelaine, an antique clip usually worn by the lady of the house. Xanthe has a talent for psychometry—she can discern details about who owned an item—and she feels this particular chatelaine speaking to her. At the demand of Margaret Merton, a ghost at the antique shop, Xanthe uses the chatelaine to travel back in time to the 17th century to save Alice, a maid and Margaret’s daughter, who has been arrested for stealing part of the chatelaine from her employer, Mistress Lovewell. Margaret threatens to harm Flora if Xanthe doesn’t help prove Alice’s innocence, so Xanthe works tirelessly in 1605 England to find the missing pieces of the chatelaine and exonerate Alice. Xanthe gains entry into the Lovewell household and attracts the attention of talented builder Samuel Appleby, a brooding man who helps Xanthe in her quest to free Alice. Brackston wonderfully blends history with the time-travel elements and a touch of romance. This series debut is a page-turner that will no doubt leave readers eager for future series installments.

August 1, 2018
Xanthe and her mother moved from London to the small town, Marlborough, to start their lives over. They purchase an antique shop whose owner has died and set out to fix it up quickly and cheaply. Unbeknownst to them, the shop is already occupied by a restless ghost, Margaret Merton, who has plans for Xanthe that have been centuries in the making. As the story progresses, the misfortunes that have befallen Xanthe and her mother are revealed. Margaret is aware of Xanthe's special ability to sense the history of items that she touches, particularly those that had great importance to their owners. It is through one of these items that Margaret is planning to have Xanthe return to the early seventeenth century and save her daughter from an unjust death. There are some tame whiffs of romance, in both the past and the present, and uncomplicated descriptions of the denizens of Marlborough, all of which combine in a solid, enjoyable read with a hint of magical time travel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

May 1, 2018

Having left London with her mother, Flora, to take over an antiques shop in Marlborough, Xanthe is suddenly whisked back to the 1600s, where an officious ghost demands that she intervene to save a girl's life--or Flora will lose hers. A series launch following the New York Times best-selling author's Witches titles.

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