Books with author Brad Joyce

Two graduating high school girls, Rebecca and Liz, are enlisted by Rebecca's father, Max, to help plan his engagement party. Max's previous fiancee died in a bizarre accident and the same venue is to be used again. Rebecca and Liz are faced with strange and ghostly occurrences that lead to underground tunnels and an unsolved mystery. The book explores the issues of second marriages, friendships, the supernatural, and the romance of the South.

Jill Parson is at the hazy point in life between being a carefree teenager and an adult. Her mother has just died in an automobile accident, and her father is out of touch in Ireland, visiting his sister, Aunt Pricilla. Distraught and alone, Jill impulsively flies to Ireland to find her father to tell him of their loss. In Ireland, at the ancestral estate, Jill finds herself in the hands of straight-laced Pricilla, who is acting more and more strangely. She assures Jill that her father is off somewhere on a research trip. As days pass and there is not a word, Pricilla shows no interest in her missing brother. She is obsessed with family tradition and her religion. As Jill continues to press for news about her father, and begins to make friends and ask questions, she becomes a victim of Pricilla's plotting and abnormal behavior, and finally realizes that her very life is in jeopardy. But is it too late to escape? The romantic tale that her parents told her, of her mother saving her father from of banshees and howling wolves before they moved to America, turns out to be true and the key to the mystery. Other major characters include: Rose, the young domestic whose family tradition has been to work for the Parsons. She has secretly been going to hotel school, and is ready now to break from Pricilla's grip. It was Rose's letter of Pricilla's emotional problems that brought Jill's father to Ireland. Rose was also the secret love-child of Pricilla's deceased husband. She is murdered by Pricilla. Barlow, the just-graduated young lawyer who loves to share Irish lore with Jill, becomes smitten with her, and ultimately saves her life and unravels the horror-filled mystery with her. Farmer: an eccentric gentleman farmer who knew Jill's father as a boy and young man, before he went to America. A master at spinning yarns and an historian, he is an expert on the Parson family history. He is murdered by Pricilla. There are other minor characters of both Jill's and Pricilla's age Jill finally uncovers and understands the twisted passions that drove Pricilla's interpretation of her family's traditions, but not before suffering terrible emotional shocks that bring her to the brink of hysteria and almost into Pricilla's scheme of being committed to a mental institution.