The Second Death of Edie and Violet Bond

Jam-packed with sisterly love, 19th-century Spiritualism, romance, mystery and nascent feminism, The Second Death of Edie and Violet Bond is a delicious historic novel for 21st-century book lovers of all stripes.

Seventeen-year-old twins Edie and Violet have inherited their mother's gift of channeling spirits (Violet) and crossing the threshold between life and death (Edie). When their mother dies under mysterious circumstances, the young women run away from their minister father who plans to commit them to Sacramento's Asylum for the Insane because of their "unnatural" abilities. Violet and Edie join a traveling Spiritualist troupe in which the female performers are mostly expected to put on a good show, sending well wishes from the afterlife to grieving loved ones left behind. Edie and some of the other young ladies in the troupe decide to use their powers for change by "channeling" great minds like Aristotle or Benjamin Franklin: "As long as they were dead--and preferably male--Edie could give a lecture on almost any topic she desired, and the audience would eat it up." Then mediums around the city start vanishing and a strange dark force begins appearing when Edie opens the Veil into death. The twins will have to use their actual powers--not their influence--to keep the ones they love safe.

Inspired by her great-grandmother Edie Bond and Edie's twin sister, Violet (both spirit mediums), this debut novel from Amanda Glaze gives readers an energetic and exciting story that offers both passionate philosophical discourse and spooky séances. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

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