TUESDAY EXCERPTS: “THE SHOP ON ROYAL STREET”

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events: First Chapter/Intros, now hosted by Socrates Book Reviews; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by The Purple Booker.

Today’s featured book is The Shop on Royal Street, by Karen White.

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Intro:

Shadowy reflections of drooping banana leaves haunted the dirt smudged windows of the old house.  It made me think of the hidden memories of people and a past long since gone but still trapped within the walls of the crumbling structure.

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Teaser:

He sipped from his own drink, something amber with two ice cubes in a crystal double old-fashioned glass, then stared down into it for a moment, thinking.  When he looked up again, he was smiling.

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Synopsis:  After a difficult detour on her road to adulthood, Nola Trenholm is looking to begin anew in New Orleans, and what better way to start her future than with her first house? But the historic fixer-upper she buys comes with even more work than she anticipated when the house’s previous occupants don’t seem to be ready to depart.

Although she can’t communicate with ghosts like her stepmother can, luckily Nola knows someone in New Orleans who is able to—even if he’s the last person on earth she wants anything to do with ever again. Beau Ryan comes with his own dark past—a past that involves the disappearance of his sister and parents during Hurricane Katrina—and he’s connected to the unsolved murder of a woman who once lived in the old Creole cottage Nola is determined to make her own…whether the resident restless spirits agree or not.

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What do you think?  Would you keep reading?

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