Change of Challenge Pick

My first challenge I signed up for was the R.I.P Challenge hosted by Stainless Steel Droppings. I chose to pick two books and have read one so far. My second choice was The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson BUT I am kind of wanting to change it. The Gargoyle is starting out pretty interesting but it's pretty intense, with a tragic accident kicking it off.

I am a bit emotional still from my son's accident that I'd rather not read about someone in a hospital overcoming serious injuries. If my mood changes I may come back to this one but I've decided to read the Dogtown by Elyssa East. It's got the spook factor that is necessary for the month of Halloween but it's more ghost story than anything else.

The full title is Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town. I received this ARC from the fabulous Alyson and Wendy at Simon and Schuster. I was particularly taken by this book because I began my career in bookselling in Boston and traveled around quite a bit in the surrounding areas of the city. It is due out November 1.

Here is the description from the publisher's website:

Description

The area known as Dogtown -- an isolated colonial ruin and surrounding 3,000-acre woodland in storied seaside Gloucester, Massachusetts -- has long exerted a powerful influence over artists, writers, eccentrics, and nature lovers. But its history is also woven through with tales of witches, supernatural sightings, pirates, former slaves, drifters, and the many dogs Revolutionary War widows kept for protection and for which the area was named. In 1984, a brutal murder took place there: a mentally disturbed local outcast crushed the skull of a beloved schoolteacher as she walked in the woods. Dogtown's peculiar atmosphere -- it is strewn with giant boulders and has been compared to Stonehenge -- and eerie past deepened the pall of this horrific event that continues to haunt Gloucester even today.

In alternating chapters, Elyssa East interlaces the story of this grisly murder with the strange, dark history of this wilderness ghost town and explores the possibility that certain landscapes wield their own unique power.

Happy Reading!

* red headed book child