By Blood Possessed (A Pat Montella Mystery Book 1)

Agatha Award NomineePat Montella, sick of her office job and looking for any shortcut to early retirement, receives a mysterious summons from a lawyer. A complete stranger--ninety-one-year-old Miss Maggie Shelby of Bell Run, Virginia--intends to bequeath her 200 acre estate to Pat. The catch is, Pat must spend a week there first with Miss Maggie, a retired history teacher who seems determined to make Pat her next star pupil. The past does indeed come alive for Pat, but in ways neither she nor Miss Maggie expect: phantom aromas of Union army chow, sounds of soldiers felling trees...and nightmarish visions of horrific battles. But while Pat delves into the saga of Bell Run and the family who gave their lives to protect it more than a century earlier, she finds, stalking her through the bewitching Virginia woodlands, a much more terrifying present-day murderer...

From Publishers Weekly

When Pat Montella receives a letter notifying her that she may be the heir to a large estate called Bell Run near Fredricksburg, Virginia, she's sure her ship has finally come in. Trapped in a boring day job as a business consultant in southern Pennsylvania, she's more than willing to overlook the strange circumstances surrounding her inheritance, including her 91-year-old benefactor Miss Magnolia Shelby's requirement that Pat stay at the old family home during the first week of May. After Pat arrives and learns that Shelby is a legendary history teacher, the request doesn't seem so odd. Pat is the only surviving member of Gabriel Bell's prosperous Confederate family. A stickler for historical justice, Shelby has decided to leave the property to its rightful owner. It's no secret that Bell Run is a developer's dream, however, and local real-estate shark Flora Shifflett wastes no time in making her services available. And Shifflett isn't the only one after the property; a notorious busybody wants the manor house restored for her beloved Historical Society; a rebellious teenager wants the land preserved to safeguard the local environment. As these competing demands plod along a desperately predictable course, the Bell family's dark past slowly comes to light. Before long, ghosts, voodoo dolls and death threats are headed Pat's way. Things take a serious turn when someone shoots at Pat with a rifle and her only rival for the inheritance turns up at the bottom of the nearby river. First-novelist Santangelo writes an atmospheric, entertaining tale, and has created an appealing heroine in Pat Montella. She's often only a hair shy of imitating Nancy Drew here, though, and never quite pulls off the Southern accent so central to the book. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA-Thirty years ago, Magnolia Shelby wrote out her will and bequeathed her beautiful Civil War-era estate, Bell Run, to a complete stranger related to the family that owned the land before the Shelbys. Now 91, Maggie feels it is time to meet her beneficiary and to introduce her to her heritage. Pat Montella, a quiet, unassuming office worker from Pennsylvania, is unaware of her distant connection to the Bell family. She travels to Virginia to meet Maggie and as the two of them explore the grounds and neighborhood, Pat becomes aware of voices and out-of-date details. She experiences blackouts and "sees" back to early May 1864 when the Confederate army was preparing for a battle on the property. The Bell family is buried there but no one knows the circumstances of their deaths. Interspersed throughout the story are diary entries from that time in which a family member describes the tragedies befalling them. While puzzling over these events and their meaning, Pat becomes the victim of attacks against her and Bell Run. She is afraid to trust the local people she meets and doesn't know who is trying to scare her away from her inheritance. These historical and contemporary elements blend into a very satisfying and suspenseful story.Penny Stevens, Centreville Regional Library, Fairfax, VA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In order to inherit some prime Virginia real estate, Patricia Montella spends two weeks with a spirited 91-year-old woman. What follows is a fascinating blend of Civil War history involving the Bells, a family wiped out by the war, and current intrigue revolving around control of their property. The old woman, a historian and former teacher, conducts Pat to cemeteries and battle sites, convinced that Pat's "visions" will tell them more about the Bells. Soon another alleged claimant appears, as do threats, shooting, and murder. The first in a new series, this excellent mystery is part historical, part supernatural thriller, with strongly forged ties between the past and present. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In the mystery genre, first novels don't get much more interesting than this one. Out of the blue, Pat Montella learns that an elderly Virginia woman, Magnolia Shelby, wants to leave her some land in her will. But a condition of the bequest is that Pat go to Virginia and spend some time with Miss Maggie. It turns out the land is the site of a Civil War battle, and Pat soon learns that she has a strange, eerie connection to events that happened 150 years ago, for she begins to hear sounds no one else hears, see things no one else sees. In many ways, this is a traditional mystery--someone seems to want to keep Pat from inheriting the land, and Pat has to figure out who--but it has a certain otherworldly quality that will appeal to readers of supernatural thrillers, for it offers an intriguing premise: If Pat's experiences aren't just a trick of her mind, can she use her unusual gift to solve a century-and-a-half-old mystery? A complete success from start to finish. David Pitt

From Kirkus Reviews

Pat Montella hates her boss, hates her dead-end job, and is getting desperately down on herself when she receives the letter that changes everything. It's from lawyer Joel Peyton, who represents a 91-year-old woman with the antebellum name of Magnolia Shelby. The text of the letter is dramatic enough. It seems that Miss Shelby wants to leave Pat her land200 extremely valuable acres in rural Virginia. But it's the subtext that really has Pat's head spinning, suggesting as it does that she's not exactly who she always thought she was. Through a never-known-about great-great-grandmother, it appears that Pat is descended from landed gentry who figured prominently in the Civil War. In fact, the property that Maggie Shelbya lot livelier and feistier than Pat had expectedwants her to have contains a famous Civil War battleground. But though Maggie does indeed want her to have the landand has spent years tracking her down in order to will it to hertheres clearly an opposing view. Somebody tries first to scare Pat off, then to kill her. And while Pat tries to discover that certain somebodys identity, she stumbles on another mysteryone involving her new batch of ancestors. It's this dustier, stranger mystery that truly disturbs her, for in the process of solving it she becomes, in some inexplicable way, a part of it . . . while it's happening. Marks the debut of a series featuring a heroine who time-travels. An author who plots better might make it work. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From the Back Cover

A VERY CONTEMPORARY WOMAN DISCOVERS A RICH PAST -- AND AN EXCITING FUTURE...The dreary days of Pat Montella's life come to a screeching halt when she's summoned to the history-laden estate of Bell Run, Virginia, where she's to inherit its old farmhouse and lovely, spacious woodlands. Ninety-one-year-old Miss Magnolia Shelby reveals the surprising reason she has chosen Pat to be her heir. Energetic Miss Maggie's passion is the Civil War, and through uncanny visions, Pat soon discovers that history can indeed come alive: in the pungent scent of roasting pork and coffee...the sudden fearsome sight of long-ago battles...the sound of bullets striking wood.What Pat "sees" while piecing together the tragic, poignant truth about Bell Run and the people who fought for it over a century ago, seduces her deeper into the past -- and into a danger more frightening and immediate than she can possibly know...

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