What is Mary Anna Evans reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Mary Anna Evans, author of Rituals.

Her entry begins:

When I was asked to write this piece, my first thought was to distinguish the books I read for work from the books I read for pleasure. Then I realized that there is no distinction between the two. I’m a writer. My work is my pleasure.

As my newest book, Rituals, makes its way into the world this week, my thoughts turn to the books I read while I was writing it, but this just drives home the notion that my work isn’t work at all. To craft a story about psychics who may or may not be the real thing, I needed to know what kinds of miracles honest psychics believe they can wreak and I needed to know how someone dishonest might fake those miracles. This brought me to Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions by James Randi and Isaac Asimov, and reading it was unadulterated fun. If you want to know how Victorian Spiritualists made tables fly and horns sound, come to me and...[read on]

About Rituals, from the publisher:

Faye Longchamp doesn’t believe in ghosts. But she’s an archaeologist—dead people are her life.

While working in Rosebower, a rural New York town founded by Spiritualists, Faye is surrounded by people who talk to the dead on a regular basis. When the most influential Spiritualist in town, Tilda Armistead, invites Faye and her project assistant to commune with the dead, she can’t say no. Curiosity is also a cherished part of an archaeologist’s life.

An hour after her crystal ball shows Faye things no rational mind can explain, Tilda is dead. The evidence says that someone trapped Tilda in a small room, nailing its one door shut before setting Tilda’s Victorian home afire. There is no possible way for Tilda to have escaped the blaze, let alone drive for miles before finding Faye and dying in her arms. Yet Tilda did. How? And why?

In this bizarre community—one not far from Seneca Falls where women’s rights activists once convened—it is sacrilegious not to believe in spooks. Plus spiritual tourism is a main Rosebower income stream. And here is Faye, surrounded by people who had reason to kill Tilda. Tilda’s estranged daughter may be the heir to the Armistead fortune. The daughter’s husband is a stage magician with a long history of making things vanish—and he’s sinfully sexy. A rich developer would like to turn Rosebower into a Disneyland complete with real ghosts, a project which Tilda fought with her considerable political clout. And then there is the town’s famed root doctor whose mysterious herbal potions are consumed by Rosebower and customers far and wide, plus the museum owner who hired Faye’s company to assess his questionable collection.

Anywhere but Rosebower, these people would be dismissed as crazy. As Faye watches the psychics and charlatans jockey for power, and sends an SOS to her shrewd husband Joe, Tilda’s sister, Myrna, is slowly dying. Will Rosebower reveal its secrets, and the Armisteads their history, to Faye before more goes up in flames?

Learn more about the author and her work at Mary Anna Evans' website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Floodgates.

Writers Read: Mary Anna Evans (October 2010).

The Page 69 Test: Strangers.

My Book, The Movie: Strangers.

The Page 69 Test: Plunder.

Writers Read: Mary Anna Evans.

--Marshal Zeringue