5 new books by Cape Cod authors: Ghosts, politics, murder and romance
It's the season of ghosts and elections, and two Cape Cod authors have new books that play right into that timing, whether you're more focused on Halloween or the mid-terms. And both are very local, with one of the ghost-ey stories tied to the area and the other about getting involved in Massachusetts politics from the perspective of a state legislator.
Other books in this batch include a gay love story set in Quebec with religious differences as part of the mix; a novel that mixes a bizarre murder with energy-efficient construction (will you ever look at your house quite the same way?); and a children's book about a beach rock that rolls off his sand dune and finds out some surprisingly things about himself. So if you're looking for a new book, here are some ideas:
“Haunted Cape Cod’s Sea Captains, Shipwrecks, and Spirits,” by Barbara Sillery (Pelican Publishing, 2022)
As the season of ghost stories approaches, this book tells the tales of clipper ships, packet ships, whale boats and steamers that left Cape home ports for dangerous journeys, and often were put in life or death situations. The compilation includes stories extracted from “The Haunting of Cape Cod and the Islands,” also by Sillery, a Cape Cod transplant from New Orleans, plus contains four new chapters about “ghostly mariners and their exploits ... or their watery graves.” But “a belief in the afterlife is not required to enjoy these stories,” Sillery notes in the prologue. Chapters include “Message in a Bottle,” “The House on the Hill in Eastham,” “The Pirate and His Would-Be Bride” and, of course, “The Ghosts of the Whydah Expedition.” Sillery has also written books about hauntings in Louisiana and Mississippi.
"For the People, Against the Tide: A Democratic Woman’s Ten Years in the Massachusetts Legislature," by Kathleen Teahan (Whispers of Wisdom, 2021)
Teahan, who served as a state legislator from 1997-2007 off-Cape and now lives here, calls this book “part topical memoir, part handbook for concerned citizens thinking about getting involved in the political process, but intimidated by practically everything in our modern American political process.” Topical in this election season, Teahan’s goal was to explain various aspects of lawmaking, lobbying and “gaining an effective voice in governing” and uses examples — including her own efforts to challenge the status quo — to offer ideas for women and other concerned citizens to pursue political positions. Information can be power, and Teahan says she still believes there is hope for change and that concerned citizens can make a difference.
“A Collision in Quebec,” by Michael Hartwig (Herring Cove Press, 2022)
Hartwig, a part-time Provincetown resident, describes his gay fiction as elevated love stories that also include international settings, characters grappling with questions about themselves and their families, and multi-layered narratives that include questions about relationships, but also spirituality. In this Canada-set romance, Brian wrecks his car in a snowstorm on the way to Winter Carnival in Quebec City and trying to get it fixed results in a collision of his gay secular culture with a conservative Muslim one. The book was chosen in June by IndieReader staff as “one of the top 10 LGBTQ+ books to read this Pride month.” Previous books by Hartwig, a professor of religion and an artist, include “Our Roman Pasts,” “Old Vines” and the “Roman Bonds” trilogy.
“Second Law,” Paul H. Raymer (Salty Air Publishing, 2022)
Want to get spooked just about being inside? Raymer is a more than 45-year resident of Falmouth who has long worked in building science, including with the federal Environmental Protection Agency on its Indoor airPLUS program. And his third novel, about a murder at a 1984 construction conference on Cape Cod, focuses on dangerous houses. As he describes it: “For the past two years, circumstances have trapped millions of us inside our homes, subjecting us to the toxic soup that makes up the air that we breathe. Unrecognized hazards fill this familiar environment.” And in this novel, Raymer “converts these hazards into weapons.” Jon Megquire, protagonist of Raymer’s previous “Death at the Edge of the Diamond,” must try to solve the murder of his roommate in three days during a gathering that showed how mistakes could have been made in the rush to satisfy the hunger to save energy in construction.
“Robbie the Rolling Rock,” by Debra Wright, illustrated by Katelyn Mahannah (independently published, 2022)
Debra Wright is a Cape Cod preschool teacher and worked to incorporate what she describes as “key literary devices, science and social/emotional learning lessons for children ages 1-6 years old” in her new book for young children. It’s the story of a rock who lives stuck in a sand dune, and one day is freed by the wind and waves to roll down to the beach below. There, Robbie makes new friends and discovers things about himself he did not know he could do, and that he’s not exactly who he thought he was.
If you'd like to have your new book, published in the past 12 months, to be considered for a future column about local authors, please contact Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll at kdriscoll@capecodonline.com.
This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape Cod authors and books: Ghosts, politics, murder, romance
