This thrilling modern ghost story will keep you reading straight through to the surprising end!

THE TALE OF HALCYON CRANE
A Novel
Wendy Webb

Henry Holt / Macmillan
$14.00 Trade Paperback Original
ISBN:  978-0-8050-9140-3
April 2010

As featured on Twin Cities Live in our
May 3 TCL What to Read Next TV segment!

Also an Indie Next Pick for April 2010!

A young woman travels alone to a remote island in the Great Lakes to uncover a past she never knew was hers….

“THE TALE OF HALCYON CRANE is a chilling and imaginative ghost story with a charming Great Lakes island setting, a fittingly spooky hilltop mansion, and a likable heroine who is forced to confront the disturbing secrets of her past and the powerful truths of her present.  Webb keeps the reader spellbound as the intertwined tales of several generations of a most unusual family unspool in magical and often eerie ways.”
—Ellen Baker, author of Keeping the House

“THE TALE OF HALCYON CRANE is a wonderfully creepy gothic tale with a distinctly modern sensibility. Ms. Webb has written a hypnotic, twisting, and vividly imagined story about the terrible and lovely ways the past impacts the present, and how one woman’s discovery of old family secrets reveals new truths about herself and her life, and sets her on a perilous road to a future she could not previously have imagined.”
—Megan Chance, author of The Spiritualist and An Inconvenient Wife

Meet author Wendy Webb at these MBA member bookstores:

Tuesday, June 8, 6:30 PM
Redbery Books, 43455 Kavanaugh Road, Cable, WI

Saturday, June 12, 12:00 Noon
Northern Lights Books & Gifts, 307 Canal Park Drive, Duluth, MN

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Download the Reading Group Guide for THE TALE OF HALCYON CRANE.

Buy this book from your favorite locally owned and operated Midwest independent bookseller!
Click here for the directory of our member bookstores

MBA BOOKSELLER INFORMATION

Booksellers — Earn up to $100 in rebates from MBA for promoting THE TALE OF HALCYON CRANE!
Midwest Connections rebate form for THE TALE OF HALCYON CRANE (PDF) – available now!

Midwest Connections sign and shelf-talkers available now! See DOWNLOADS below.

THE TALE OF HALCYON CRANE: A NOVEL by Wendy Webb ($14.00 Trade Paperback Original, ISBN: 978-0-8050-9140-3)  is available from Macmillan or your preferred wholesaler.  Be sure to contact the publisher for more information about this title.

If you’d like to inquire about a store or book club event or phoner with author Wendy Webb, please contact  publicist Chastity Lovely at Henry Holt, chastity.lovely@hholt.com,  .

MBA and Hachette would love to have your comments and reviews for this debut novel. Please send them to us so we can share your endorsements with your fellow MBA booksellers and with your customers!

DOWNLOADS

THE TALE OF HALCYON CRANE is featured in the May 3 Twin Cities Live What to Read Next television segment.  Please use the sign and shelf-talker PDFs below to print promo materials for store displays.

SIGN FOR MAY 3 FEATURED BOOKS (PDF)
SHELF-TALKERS FOR MAY 3 FEATURED BOOKS (PDF)

Note:  The shelf-talkers need to be printed on card stock and cut apart along crop marks. Each book has its own shelf-talker, which is double so that it can be used either on the shelf under the book, or as a slip card standing up from the top of the book like a large bookmark.

• Full-color sign/flyer (PDF) — NEW!
• Full-color shelf-talker (PDF) – NEW!
• Reading Group Guide (PDF)
• Author photo (JPG)
• Book cover photo (JPG)
• Midwest Connections rebate form for THE TALE OF HALCYON CRANE (PDF)  — available now!
• Midwest Connections Generic Display Materials

ABOUT THE BOOK

“THE TALE OF HALCYON CRANE is a wonderful gothic complete with ghosts and witches, graveyards and dreams.  It whisks the reader up and into its magic from the first page. Captivating and haunting, this debut proves Wendy Webb is a very gifted storyteller.”
—M.J. Rose, author of The Memorist and The Reincarnationist

When a mysterious letter lands in Hallie James’s mailbox, her life is upended. Hallie was raised by her loving father, having been told her mother died in a fire decades earlier. But it turns out that her mother, Madlyn, was alive until very recently. Why would Hallie’s father have taken her away from Madlyn? What really happened to her family thirty years ago?

In search of answers, Hallie travels to the place where her mother lived, a remote island in the middle of the Great Lakes. The stiff islanders fix her first with icy stares and then unabashed amazement as they recognize why she looks so familiar, and Hallie quickly realizes her family’s dark secrets are enmeshed in the history of this strange place. But not everyone greets her with such a chilly reception—a coffee-shop owner and the family’s lawyer both warm to Hallie, and the possibility of romance blooms. And then there’s the grand Victorian house bequeathed to her—maybe it’s the eerie atmosphere or maybe it’s the prim, elderly maid who used to work for her mother, but Hallie just can’t shake the feeling that strange things are starting to happen.

In THE TALE OF HALCYON CRANE, Wendy Webb has created a haunting story full of delicious thrills, vibrant characters, and family secrets.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wendy Webb is editor in chief of Duluth-Superior magazine. A journalist with two decades of experience, she grew up in St. Louis Park, MN, and now lives in Duluth.  This is her first novel.

Wendy grew up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota (also the home town of directors Joel and Ethan Coen and comedian-turned-politician Al Franken). She attended the University of Minnesota, graduating with a degree in political science. After spending some time living abroad, Wendy settled into a job in Washington, D.C., where she was lucky enough to work on Capitol Hill for a senator from her state. Home was calling, though, and after a few years in D.C., she moved back to Minnesota and decided to try a career using what she felt was her most marketable skill — writing. She got an internship at City Pages, an arts and entertainment weekly in Minneapolis, and never looked back. During the past 20 years or so, she has written for most of the major publications in the Twin Cities. She lives in the Lake Superior port city of Duluth, where she has been the editor-in-chief of a lifestyle monthly magazine.

When she’s not writing, she and her mate, photographer Steve Burmeister, and son Ben enjoy spending time at their cabin in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, walking their 130-pound Alaskan Malamute named Tundra, and visiting with family and friends in Minneapolis.  She is currently at work on her next novel.