“The Spectre of Stanhope Lane”, a new novel by James W. Macnutt, will be launched today at Beaconsfield's Carriage House, Charlottetown, at 7 p.m.
The event is hosted by the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation and The Bookmark.
Scottish beliefs and traditions in the supernatural are core elements in this story which takes readers from 2019 to explore the early settlement of Stanhope in 1775.
Every summer Frank Longworth, a pragmatic and matter-of-fact lawyer, takes himself away from the bustle of his business and family life and enjoys a few solitary weeks in the pristine coastal landscape of P.E.I. One evening, as he takes his usual walk from his cottage to the beach, he comes into contact with something inexplicable and sinister. It is an encounter that will shake his tidily organized life to its foundations.
The book has received positive reviews from Jack Whytock, author/lecturer. He writes: “MacNutt has done it! He has made the foray from his previous architectural, travel and cultural books into a work of unique fiction and has done it with great skill.
“‘The Spectre of Stanhope Lane” is written with imagination, creativity and amazing insight and attention to historical detail and research into the Scottish world and the place of the diaspora.”
The publisher, Austin Macauley Publishers, also gives the book a thumbs up: “The vivid and colourful prose will captivate readers, pulling them into the story and holding on until the very end.”
The book is available at The Bookmark and Indigo. It is being sold in the United Kingdom by Waterstone and Foyles and by Amazon in the States.
The book will also be lodged in the British Library, Oxford Library, Cambridge Library, as well as the University of Edinburgh and the National Library in Dublin.
