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The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry
The Lace Reader is set in Salem, Massachusetts, the hometown of Towner Whitney, yet the place she has avoided since she was 17. Her mother runs a shelter for abused women on an island off the coast, and her great-aunt Eva can read futures in women's lace patterns. Towner also possesses this ability, but she has suppressed it. When Eva goes missing, Towner comes back to Salem to find her. Towner, though, has a past rife with mental illness, and when she arrives in Salem, she finds Eva's ghost. Is her disappearance linked to the Calvinists, a group of misogynists still trying to drive all witches from town? Towner must confront her family's past to sort out the present, but even she's not sure where the truth lies. Brunonia Barry's debut novel has received mostly positive reviews with the New York Daily News saying, "Indeed, while The Lace Reader is rooted in the everyday of small-town life, it has a hallucinatory quality throughout as Towner's vision clouds with fear. In the end, reality shifts again as Barry delivers her final strike. It's hefty enough to throw everything into question and a great way to leave off a really good book."
