THE BONES OF THE HOLY

In this fifth Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator installment, amateur sleuth Gilda travels to historic St. Augustine to encounter a ghostly woman in white and ends up literally buried in another baffling mystery.

Horrified when her mother returns from a getaway weekend in St. Augustine engaged to an antiques dealer named Eugene Pook, whom she met on the Internet and plans to marry immediately, Gilda experiences her “psychic signal,” a tickling in her left ear, warning something unusual or dangerous is about to occur. Arriving in St. Augustine for the wedding, Gilda finds Eugene to be “older, plump, walruslike” and definitely weird. She loves the ghost tour of St. Augustine, “one of the most haunted cities in the entire United States,” but is surprised when Eugene’s 12-year-old neighbor confesses she’s seen a spectral woman in white in his house. Gilda discovers Eugene had been jilted years before by his fiancée, Charlotte, who looked just like Gilda’s mother and mysteriously vanished. Now Eugene seems to be re-creating his aborted wedding. Could the woman in white be Charlotte’s ghost? Local ghost tales, Gilda’s spy records, letters and travelogue flesh out the account of how this sassy wannabe investigator tries to save her mother from Charlotte’s fate.