Cruel Sister: A Haunted Ballad [Hardcover]

Deborah Grabien (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 2006

Penny Wintercraft-Hawkes's brother has returned from Hong Kong with a comfortable fortune and a new bride and is planning to build a house on land he's inherited. Because they want a house as much like an Elizabethan mansion as its "mod cons" will allow, they ask Penny's lover, Ringan Laine, to work on it as a consultant. Ringan is not only a noted musician but also a designer and architect well versed in the first Elizabeth's colorful period.

The house is to be on the Isle of Dogs, and Penny's brother, his new wife, and Penny herself are delighted with the site. Ringan, however, comes away feeling very uncomfortable. A few weeks later, in London on business, he goes back alone, hoping to clear up any misgivings he has about the place. But this visit is even worse than the first. He hears women's voices, frightening and full of passion, coming from the air around him.

That evening, Ringan is sleeping in Penny's flat; she has taken her theater troupe to Italy. A late-night phone call from Penny reveals to them both that they had an identical dream. In it, two young women on the Isle of Dogs are fighting. One is begging the other not to drown her. Their speech and their clothes put them firmly in the reign of Henry VIII. Once more, Penny and Ringan are being visited by tragic spirits from their country's past.  

This is the fourth in Deborah Grabien's gripping and unusual Haunted Ballad series. Her stories pair two sophisticated and very likable people whose lives are invaded by tortured souls from England's history. With each encounter, Penny and Ringan are forced to find a way to lay a long-suffering ghost to rest.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Grabien's mesmerizing fourth mystery of ghostly suspense (after 2005's Matty Groves), actress Penny Wintercraft-Hawkes gets a call from her long-absent brother, Stephen, who has returned to London from Hong Kong with his wife, Tamsin, to claim land he inherited on the Isle of Dogs, situated on the Thames. Stephen wants Penny's lover, Ringan Laine, a folk musician and expert in period restoration, to consult on his plan to build a Tudor-style manor house on the site. Ringan's uneasy first steps on the isle are only the prelude to the horror of visions to come. A girl who drowns her sister, a pack of baying dogs and a musician from Henry VIII's court invade Ringan's dreams and his waking life. As in previous entries to the series, one of Ringan's folksongs figures into the story and enhances the drama. Grabien's skillful blend of reality and the supernatural will chill even skeptical readers. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Traditional musician Ringan Laine is also an expert on period architecture, which is why his partner, Penny, asks him to help her brother and his new wife build a Tudor-style manor house in London's newly trendy Isle of Dogs neighborhood. As he begins to work on the project, Ringan is troubled by visits from the ghost of a long-dead Italian musician, who may be an ancestor. It seems that the Isle of Dogs was the site of a bomb accident after World War II. It also appears to be the location of some tragic events involving the Italian musician and assorted young women during the reign of Henry VIII. Ringan and his associates must put the ghosts to rest before he suffers the fate of his Italian relative. As she did in Matty Groves (2005), Grabien blends folklore, music, suspense, and the supernatural to create a genre-bending mix of historical mystery and ghost story. Fans of both will be pleased. Barbara Bibel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (October 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312357575
• ISBN-13: 978-0312357573
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,166,100 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A completely engrossing read, November 3, 2010

By 

L. J. Roberts (Oakland, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cruel Sister: A Haunted Ballad (Hardcover)

First Sentence: Under a choking black fog, in which the air itself seemed composed of ash from the winter coal fires, a battered ten-year-old Austin Tilley lorry rumbled and bounced along Westferry Road on the south-eastern edge of London's Isle of Dogs.

Folklorist, singer and restoration consultant Ringan Laine has been hired by his partner Penny's brother and sister-in-law. They are building a large Elizabethan-style home on the Isle of Dogs next to the Thames. Ringan's first visit to the site makes him uncomfortable and second visit progresses to voices and visions. From there, things become rapidly worse as Penny fears she may lose Ringan forever to the past.

Having enjoyed the previous three books in this series, I selected this as my Halloween read for this year and am so glad I did. Grabien seamlessly blends the real and the paranormal; what is with what might be, and it works. This isn't icky, creepy stuff, but scary in the anticipation of what might happen. It is also not formulaic. I so appreciate that each book in the series handles the paranormal aspect in a different manner. That, alone, adds to the suspense.

One need not worry about starting this series at the beginning. Grabien establishes the background and history of previous paranormal experiences easily within the plot without slowing down the story. The dialogue is a little stiff at times, but the stories really are plot driven.

And a good plot it is. It's not silly, fluffy or over the top. It starts out innocently enough and then builds. It is also the perfect balance of music, history, mystery and the paranormal; each of which I love and sent me to the internet after finishing the book. It delights me to learn new things and when I can't easily tell what is factual and what is fictional because the story is so well done, it all seems true.

I found "Cruel Sister" completely engrossing; as in I read it straight through in 4 hours because I couldn't bear to put it down. There is one more book in the "Haunted Ballad" series, which I shall definitely read. Hopefully one day, there will be more.

CRUEL SISTER (Para/Mys-Penny and Ringan-England-Cont) - VG
Grabien, Deborah - 4th in series
Thomas Dunn Books, ©2006, US Hardcover - ISBN: 0312357575

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars High priority reading, November 9, 2006

By 

C. A. Sweeney "book addict" (California, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cruel Sister: A Haunted Ballad (Hardcover)

I don't have to-read piles of books. I have to-read bookcases. Two of them, both overfilled. Embarrassing but true. When I retire with no money in my bank account, I'll be eating paperbacks, not cat food. So when I tell you that Deborah Grabien's new book never even made it onto the to-read pile, that's saying something. It's a predictable pattern: a new Grabien book arrives, I stay up into the wee hours of the morning reading it, then it makes its way to my "finished" bookcases. Unlike some of my other favorite authors, Grabien's books do not get put on the Amazon Marketplace sales list when I'm finished with them. They're mine, mine, mine!

Pardon me. Got a little carried away there. Anyway, you can get the plot summary of this book from other places on this Web page. What I want to tell you about "Cruel Sister" is that you don't need to believe in ghosts to read it; Grabien works them so matter-of-factly into the plot that you find yourself swept along into the narrative. You don't need to be able to carry a tune to enjoy the latest adventures of folksinger Ringan Laine; the writing hums along beautifully. And while it's always nice to read a series in order, Grabien does a good job of quickly summing up Ringan and Penny's previous ghostly encounters without slowing the current story down, so if you want to jump into the series with this book, you can do so quite easily.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cruel Sister, October 31, 2006

By 

leszlaw (North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cruel Sister: A Haunted Ballad (Hardcover)

Fans of Grabien's Haunted Ballads know that while musician Ringan Laine is familiar with historical buildings and how to restore and sometimes repurpose them, it's Penny Wintercraft-Hawkes, Ringan's long-time lover and herself owner of the Bellefield Theater and manager of the Tamburlaine Players acting troupe, who's always been sensitive to ghosts. But something seems awry in this new offering; this time it's Ringan who's caught up in a tangle of ghostly mystery on the Isle of Dogs. And it's up to Penny, along with some secondary characters in welcome repeat appearances, to sort the clues given in the traditional ballad from which the book takes its name.

Unused to being caught in cross-time webs of intrigue, romance, politics and danger, Ringan is pushed to the brink of endurance while Penny learns all she can about the historical facts behind the traditional lyrics.

As masterful a storyteller as ever, Grabien gives "Penny and Ringan" fans another delightful read.