Homeplace

by Elizabeth Massie and Beth Massie

The isolated ancestral home of a beautiful young artist hides a terrifying secret. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425216896
• ISBN13: 9780425216897
• Release Date: August 2007
• Publisher: Berkley Books
• Length: 293 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 4.3" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Homeplace is Southern Gothic Horror at its best

I have just had the pleasure of reading Beth Massie's recent novel HOMEPLACE. The voice is distinct and southern. The location is an isolated little town called Adams, and an even more isolated farm called Homeplace. Our protagonist, Charlene, has come back to claim the old place as a sort of artist's retreat in an attempt to jump start her painting career and revitalize her life. Her memories of the place aren't pleasant ones, and right from the start, the present lives up to the darkness promised by the past. Homeplace is dilapidated, filthy, lacks proper appliances, and - by the way - seems to be haunted. Throughout this novel, the thing that is driven home is what a different world it is out in the middle of nowhere, cut off from cities, officials, and the world. People think and act differently. Things that would not matter to a city dweller are of great importance, and things that would matter in the city bring dull stares. As Charlene delves into the secrets of her family, and their ancestral home, those around her warn her away. The old woman who visits the Alexander graveyard to keep it clean, the old men of the village, none have a good word for Homeplace, or the family that inhabited it. The rumors are dark, and ugly - the involve a locked building called "The Children's House" and an old well covered over and all but forgotten. They involve a diary filled with the horrors of a woman's past, and the rumors of life beyond the grave. Animals go crazy. People die. Charlene finds herself in a war with her past, her ancestors, her neighbors, and possibly falling in love with her new friend Andrew, a lawyer who has also returned to his roots in Adams, not to paint, but to write a novel. He practices law on the side, but - though not to the extent that Charlene is - he is treated as an outsider. Someone who doesn't know how things are. He finds out, as does Charlene, and the ending will both chill and surprise you. This is a wonderful southern gothic thriller with all the necessary ingredients to entertain readers and send shivers dancing up and down their spines. Highly recommended.

CHILLING GHOST STORY!

This story has a dark, old gothic style feel to it. If you like your scary to give you goosebumps and not make you feel queasy than this is a book for you. This would make a terrific movie,a return to horror, without the slasher trash! Happy Reading!

Suspenseful, Scary and Well Written

J.L. Comeau's review of Elizabeth Massie's HOMEPLACE tells you all you need to know about the story's plot, so I won't go into that here. His reference to Harper Lee is entirely appropriate, not only because the novel is set in the South, but because Massie creates characters as believably human as Lee's. This is what I find striking about Massie's writing and what sets her, for me, above other genre writers: she creates rich, three dimensional characters who you care about, then puts them in situations that severely tests them. No other "horror" writer I know does this so well, both here and in the pseudonymously written TWISTED BRANCH (which I also recommend highly). Suspenseful, scary, well written and as spooky and scary as all hell, HOMEPLACE is a thoroughly enjoyable book.

Southern Gothic at its Best!

Beth Massie's fiction is as steady and sure as the Blue Ridge Mountains, and darker than a Virginia backwoods midnight. If you've ever visited the Virginia mountains, you know that there is enchantment out there among the dogwoods and maples, and something dangerous stirring further back, past where the established trails will ever take you. There is a long tradition of hex-workers in the rural pockets that still lurk beyond the Interstates, and Ms. Massie wants to tell you about one of those vanishing outposts, a dilapidated farmhouse called Homeplace, which stand surrounded by more than a hundred rough acres of Virginia wilderness. When Charlene Meyers was a young girl, her mother took her to the country to meet her grandma, a bent and haggard old woman in a rocking chair beyond the creaking front stairs of Homeplace. It was a scary experience. Now Charlene is grown, her mother and grandmother are dead, and she has inherited Homeplace. Although ugly dreams of the old place have plagued Charlene for years, her career as an urban-based artist has grown stagnant, so what better for the renewal of her creative muse than a retreat to the quiet Virginia countryside, to Homeplace? The charming country haven that Charlene imagines will be an inspiring idyll quickly becomes a horrific nightmare. Seems that grandma was a rumored to be a witch, and something is waiting for Charlene just inside the creaking front stairs of Homeplace, beyond grandma's rocking chair. Something is waiting in the dark at the top of the stairs. And it's bad. It's really bad. Elizabeth Massie's languid prose is seductive and beguiling, drawing the reader into a shimmering world of darkness that suddenly shapeshifts into a maelstrom of terror. A contender for the 2007 Bram Stoker Award, HOMEPLACE is Southern Gothic horror of the highest order, not to be missed. Surely Eudora Welty and Harper Lee are smiling down upon Ms. Massie, one of their own.