Summary

Slip time novels featuring paralleling contemporary and historical plots where the protagonists from each timeline try to unraveling a mystery that spans the two eras.

Stats

Genre: Adult suspense slip time (books with both a historical and contemporary plotline that are connected somehow)

Series length: Each book is a standalone

Violence: Moderate to moderately strong, covering everything from human trafficking to suicide, though not described in a graphic way beyond what the story warrants.

Magic/Supernatural: Light -- sometimes a mysterious element is left unexplained

Romance: Moderate--usually each timeline features a romantic subplot. 

Christian/spiritual element: Overt Christian content

Recommendation: For readers who enjoy historical, suspense and contemporary genres, or are looking for something slightly off the beaten path of one of those three genres. 

To Purchase

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Opening Lines:

Death had a way of creeping up on a soul, and Ivy Thorpe was determined that when it visited her, she would not be surprised. her story would be recorded and remembered. There was nothing worse than seeing the casing of a soul that had drifted into eternity, knowing the body would return to dust while the life lived because a tin-plated photograph with a forgotten name. Lives lost in the passage of time. Unremembered. Like Andrew. 

The House on Foster Hill
by Jaime Jo Wright

Kaine Prescott is no stranger to death. When her husband died two years ago, her pleas for further investigation into his suspicious death fell on deaf ears. In desperate need of a fresh start, Kaine purchases an old house sight unseen in her grandfather's Wisconsin hometown. But one look at the eerie, abandoned house immediately leaves her questioning her rash decision. And when the house's dark history comes back with a vengeance, Kaine is forced to face the terrifying realization she has nowhere left to hide.

A century earlier, the house on Foster Hill holds nothing but painful memories for Ivy Thorpe. When an unidentified woman is found dead on the property, Ivy is compelled to discover her identity. Ivy's search leads her into dangerous waters and, even as she works together with a man from her past, can she unravel the mystery before any other lives—including her own—are lost?

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Opening Lines:

Libby Sheffield had never stopped to wonder what she would take specific note of if she ever stumbled upon a dead body. Still, she hadn't expected to pause in consideration of the black, patent leather shoes, the finely cut wool trousers, or the shirtsleeves cuffed at the man's wrists with cuff links boasting a scrolled G​ for Greenwood, his last name. Taking note of a corpse's clothing was certainly not important, but maybe it was merely a distraction to deter her from letting loose the longest scream she'd ever let scrape from her throat. The man's feet dangled in the air, any thrashing having long since ceased. His face...Libby looked away. His face wasn't one she ever wished to see again, though it was morel ikely than not permanently grafted into her vault of memories. 

The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond
by Jaime Jo Wright

For over a century, the town of Gossamer Grove has thrived on its charm and midwestern values, but Annalise Forsythe knows painful secrets, including her own, hover just beneath the pleasant façade. When a man is found dead in his run-down trailer home, Annalise inherits the trailer, along with the pictures, vintage obituaries, and old revival posters covering its walls. As she sorts through the collection, she's wholly unprepared for the ramifications of the dark and deadly secrets she'll uncover.

A century earlier, Gossamer Grove has been stirred into chaos by the arrival of controversial and charismatic twin revivalists. The chaos takes a murderous turn when Libby Sheffield, working at her father's newspaper, receives an obituary for a reputable church deacon hours before his death. As she works with the deacon's son to unravel the mystery behind the crime, it becomes undeniably clear that a reckoning has come to town--but it isn't until another obituary arrives that they realize the true depths of the danger they've waded into.

Two women, separated by a hundred years, must uncover the secrets within the borders of their own town before it's too late and they lose their future--or their very souls.

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Opening Lines:

Melancholy was a condition of the spirit and the soul, but also of the mind. Still, she'd never seen melancholy claim a life and be the cause of a body laid to rest in permanent sleep. At peace? One hoped. Prayed, if they were of that bend. Regardless, as she positioned herself beside the corpse, boxlike camera clutched to her chest, Thea Reed found melancholy fascinating. For its persistent grip and the power it held even until death. That it could claim a life was a horrifying mystery. 

The Curse of Misty Wayfair
by Jaime Jo Wright

Left at an orphanage as a child, Thea Reed vowed to find her mother someday. Now grown, her search takes her to Pleasant Valley, Wisconsin, in 1908. When clues lead her to a mental asylum, Thea uses her experience as a post-mortem photographer to gain access and assist groundskeeper Simeon Coyle in photographing the patients and uncovering the secrets within. However, she never expected her personal quest would reawaken the legend of Misty Wayfair, a murdered woman who allegedly haunts the area and whose appearance portends death.

A century later, Heidi Lane receives a troubling letter from her mother--who is battling dementia--compelling her to travel to Pleasant Valley for answers to her own questions of identity. When she catches sight of a ghostly woman who haunts the asylum ruins in the woods, the long-standing story of Misty Wayfair returns--and with it, Heidi's fear for her own life.

As two women across time seek answers about their identities and heritage, can they overcome the threat of the mysterious curse that has them inextricably intertwined?

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Opening Lines:

She should have paid more attention to her longtime neighbor, Oliver Schneider, when she passed him on the road at dawn. Her, hiking at an energetic, running-late march, and him strolling the lane, hands in his pockets, and overall straps over thin but strong shoulders. After all, they'd grown up together--albeit more acquaintances than friends--and Oliver rarely said anything that wasn't worth listening to. But, while Imogene had paused for a polite morning greeting, she hadn't taken his words and let them sink into her soul as perhaps they should have. 

Echoes Among the Stones
by Jaime Jo Wright

After Aggie Dunkirk's career is unceremoniously ended by her own mistakes, she finds herself traveling to Wisconsin, where her grandmother, Mumsie, lives alone in her vintage, though very outdated, home. Aggie didn't plan for how eccentric Mumsie has become, obsessing over an old, unsolved crime scene—even going so far as to re-create it in a dollhouse.

Mystery seems to follow Aggie when she finds work as a secretary helping to restore the flooded historical part of the town's cemetery. Forced to work with a puzzling yet attractive archaeologist, she exhumes the past's secrets and unwittingly uncovers a crime that some will go to any length to keep hidden—even if that means silencing Aggie.

In 1946, Imogene Grayson works in a beauty salon but has her sights set on Hollywood. But coming home to discover her younger sister's body in the attic changes everything. Unfamiliar with the burgeoning world of forensic science and, as a woman, not particularly welcomed into the investigation, Imogene is nonetheless determined to stay involved. As her sister's case grows cold, Imogene vows to find justice . . . no matter the cost.

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Opening Lines:

Life was not unlike the wisp of fog that curled around the base of a grave marker, softly caressing the marble before dissolving into the violet shadows of the night. There was a sweetness in its bitter that left an aftertaste, a vision, a moment of wonderment. Too often it floated away before one could grasp it, retrieve it, hold on to it, savor it, and then bid it farewell with a tear and a reminiscent smile. Instead, the race to capture life was ended before it ever really began, leaving behind the dewdrops of questions, the footprints of unmet needs, and the spirits hovering just out of reach--voices lost to the annals of unwritten histories. 

The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus
by Jaime Jo Wright

1928
The Bonaventure Circus is a refuge for many, but Pippa Ripley was rejected from its inner circle as a baby. When she receives mysterious messages from someone called the "Watchman," she is determined to find him and the connection to her birth. As Pippa's search leads her to a man seeking justice for his murdered sister and evidence that a serial killer has been haunting the circus train, she must decide if uncovering her roots is worth putting herself directly in the path of the killer.

Present Day
The old circus train depot will either be torn down or preserved for historical importance, and its future rests on real estate project manager Chandler Faulk's shoulders. As she dives deep into the depot's history, she's also balancing a newly diagnosed autoimmune disease and the pressures of single motherhood. When she discovers clues to the unsolved murders of the past, Chandler is pulled into a story far darker and more haunting than even an abandoned train depot could portend.

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Opening Lines:

He had ruined death for her, and the hope of it. Thwarted death on all sides,  until the possibility of escape was removed entirely, and she was left with breath, body, and the plaguing memories of many yesterdays. memories she would never allow to rise to the surface again. Like a shipwreck beneath the brutal waves of the expanse of cold lake, so were the abuses she had endured. it would be a monumental task to raise them from their graves, to revive them, and to see them sail again. And who would want to? Shipwrecks were things to be forgotten. memories were like shipwrecks. 

On the Cliffs of Foxglove Manor
by Jaime Jo Wright

1885.
Adria Fontaine has been sent to recover goods her father pirated on the Great Lakes during the war. But when she arrives at Foxglove Manor--a stone house on a cliff overlooking Lake Superior--Adria senses wickedness hovering over the property. The mistress of Foxglove is an eccentric and seemingly cruel old woman who has filled her house with dangerous secrets, ones that may cost Adria her life.

Present day.
Kailey Gibson is a new nurse's aide at a senior home in a renovated old stone manor. Kidnapped as a child, she has nothing but locked-up memories of secrets and death, overshadowed by the chilling promise from her abductors that they would return. When the residents of Foxglove start sharing stories of whispers in the night, hidden treasure, and a love willing to kill, it becomes clear this home is far from a haven. She'll have to risk it all to banish the past's demons, including her own.

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The Souls of Lost Lake
by Jaime Jo Wright

Wren Blythe has long enjoyed being among the Northwoods, helping her father with programming at a youth camp. But when a little girl in the area goes missing, an all-out search ensues, reviving the decades-old campfire story of Ava Coons, the murderess, who still roams the woods. Joining the search, Wren stumbles upon the Coons cabin ruins and a rotting porcelain doll. But even more terrifying is seeing her name etched on the doll's foot like a sinister omen.

In 1930, Ava Coons has spent the last ten years carrying the mantle of mystery since she emerged from the forest as an eight-year-old girl, spattered with blood, dragging a logger's axe. She has accepted she'll never remember what happened to her family. When a member of the town of Tempter's Creek is murdered, rumors spread that Ava's secret is more malicious than previously imagined.

Both women discover that to save the innocent, they must face an insidious evil.

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