Roger and Irene McCuller had given their all to turn an old barn into a great summer stock theatre. They were prepared for opposition from the town's ruling bluebloods, but nothing could have prepared them for a performance rehearsed in hell.
Will Cable, once famous, now a has-been. He lived the history of American stage, screen, radio, and television. Almost everyone thought he was dead.
The child Rachel has been dead for well over a hundred years. Has she returned as a guiding spirit, playful ghost, or revengeful demon.
These are the featured players as the curtain risis on a deadly drama at the Valley Forge Playhouse.
People think of ghost stories as trash fiction. This book aims to change that thinking
Has-Beens is a thriller about ghosts aimed at the 40-65% of readers who deman or wish for something with more intellectual substance that the typical paranormal, mystery/thriller, horror story. It's particuar focus is upon those many vacationers who what a good book for their two weeks at the shore or in the mountains, and commuters who want a book with a satisfactory sub-story in each chapter.
This story takes place in the wealthy Philadelphiia suburbs known as the Main Line, and centers about the quest of a young couple converting a barn into The Valley Forge Playhouse, and how attempts to thwart that effort come from local residents and persistant spirits. The ghostly and theatrical aspects are neatly laced together with scientific fact and theatre history.
Excerpt
...She stopped at the fence and looked up at the girl. Wisps of fair hair lared about the edge of her bonned glowing in the late-day sun and framing her face in gold. It was the girl's hands that made Amanda draw back for a moment. They were hard hands, callused and cracked from rough work, with red, raw fingers that looked about to bleed. But the fingers moved with a gentle mothion, begging to be taken and Amanda obliged, joining her soft baby hand with the smiling girl's cold, stony grip.
"Rachel," said the girl.
Amanda sought meaning in the girl's eyes with that miraculous comprehension granted only to children.
"Rachel," said the girl again.
And Amanda understood. Sounds were not yet speech but Mommy, Daddy, Christopher, milk, hell, and No! already related to specific and permanently recorded images, functional memory, beginnings. And now there was Rachel.
Amanda tugged on the girl's hand and together they walked into the orchard. The fact that Rachel walked through the iron fence meant nothing to Amanda.
Can something so perfect really be poisonous?
When Rachel and her husband Adam move to Maple Cottage in remote Cheshire, it should be the fulfilment of their dream to start a family.
Haunted by her past and challenged by events around he
Following several murders, means, motive, and opportunity all point to out-of-work actresses Bootsie Kittredge and Babs Harrison. Their claims of righteousness and lack of guilt seem fabricated, thanks to a cheerfull announcement made to the patrons
