Willow Tate is back in the bosom of her family. Well, at
least the bosom of her hometown, Paumanok Harbor. She has
agreed to look after her mother's strays while she is away
in Florida. As her mother said, a cartoonist can work
anywhere, why not where she can do some good?
Willow is a well-known and award-winning writer of graphic
novels, but her most troublesome skill is as a Visualizer.
She can draw images of those from the realm of Faerie and
sometimes they manifest in our world. There was that 10-
foot-tall red troll who followed her from her place in
Manhattan to Paumanok Harbor, for example. Her home town
neighbors' odd reactions revealed a secret at that point,
that many of them had 'interesting' talents of their own,
from picking lucky numbers to scrying.
It was only natural that when glowing white horses bringing
horrible dreams and emotions started sweeping through the
area the town looked to Willow first as both cause and
solution.
Willow herself was caught up in a recurring dream of a
trapped foal, which may indicate why the mares were so
frantic but she doesn't feel up to handling things on her
own. She calls on her fiancé and his Department of
Unexplained Events for help. Rather than come himself (he
has a Yeti to track down) the Department sends a rather
intriguing horse whisperer. With the special talents of the
residents of Paumanok Harbor and the sexy horse-whispering
cowboy, Willow may be able to handle things after all, but
not before mayhem reaches a fever pitch.
NIGHT MARES IN THE HAMPTONS (and its predecessor, Trolls
in the Hamptons) are cozy mysteries with a firm basis in
paranormal fiction. Willow is an interesting main character,
and the quirky and indispensable residents of her home town
provide the main interest in the series, for me. The
paranormal elements are central to the story but a great
deal of my enjoyment came from the matter-of-fact acceptance
of magic and psychic powers by the residents of an otherwise
typical New England village. The third book in the series,
Fire Works in the Hamptons is due out in November
2011.
Graphic novelist Willow Tate is a Visualizer, able to draw
images of beings from the realm of Faerie, bringing them
from their world to ours in the process. After a
ten-foot-tall red troll follows her from Manhattan to
Paumanok Harbor in the Hamptons, Willow realizes that many
of her relatives and their neighbors possess psychic
talents-truth- knowing, scrying, weaving wishes, picking
lucky numbers, and more. So when magic and mayhem return to
Paumanok Harbor, and Willow is called upon to rescue the
town, she enlists the local talent. Three magical mares are
searching the Long Island village for a missing colt, and
their distress is causing sleeping nights, bad tempers, and
dangerous brawls among the gifted but peculiar residents.
Though the Department of Unexplained Events sends Willow a
world-famous horse whisperer, Texan Ty Farraday seems more
interested in whispering in her ear than in rescuing the
kidnapped colt whose terror only Willy can feel. Even with
help, she still has to struggle with snakes, drug dealers,
tourists, hidden caves, a mad scientist-and the almost
overwhelming distraction of that sexy cowboy...