Title: THE THIN PLACE
Author: Lori Herter
Genre: Women’s Fiction/Romance
Book Blurb:
Glenna Molloy, a travel writer, flies to Ireland to explore sacred places cherished by her great lost love, Finn Maguire, in hopes of finding new meaning in her life. But her intrusive and cagey co-author, Coyle Foxworth, can’t work without her. He follows her to County Fermanagh, disturbing her spiritual journey. They visit tiny Caldragh Graveyard with its ancient pagan stone and fairy tree. The graveyard is reputed to be a “Thin Place,” where the veil between our world and the Celtic Otherworld is so fragile it can disappear. There they meet a mysterious female femme fatale, Maeve, who says she is half-fey. Soon magical things begin to happen…
Excerpt:
Chapter One: Boa Island
The tiny, fenced graveyard, surrounded by gnarled trees and thick foliage, lay misty and silent in the May morning’s drizzle. The only sounds Glenna Molloy heard were the intricate notes of hidden songbirds. The quiet rush of nearby water reminded her she was on an island in a large lake formed by ice age glaciers.
She opened the creaky metal gate. The ground inside was uneven, with rocks buried beneath lush, six-inch grass. She had the unsettling feeling she was stepping on broken headstones from centuries past. Some, perhaps, of Finn’s ancestors. She checked the standing headstones for his surname, Maguire, but found none. Most of the intact gravestones were far too weathered to read.
Making her way to the center of the graveyard, she searched for the pre-Christian carved stone she’d seen in Finn’s book, Ireland’s Thin Places. Published twenty years ago, the book was filled with his mystical color photos of ancient sites.
Eily O’Grady, Glenna’s B & B landlady, had given her directions to Caldragh Graveyard. She wished Eily had come along, to help her find the monument.
All at once she spotted it in front of her, a dome-shaped rock at least three feet high. The face engraved on it, whose slanted, serene eyes seemed to keep watch, appeared only mildly eroded despite perhaps thousands of years of exposure to the elements. She walked around the stone to see a similar face carved on the other side.
Glenna reached into her raincoat pocket for her well-used digital. She pressed the button to turn it on, but nothing happened. Slapping it against her palm, she coaxed it to push out its lens. If only she could spare the money to buy a new one. A travel writer using a decrepit camera was like a violinist bowing with moth-eaten horsehairs. Though no photo she took could ever come close to the artistic beauty Finn used to create, no matter what camera he used.
She snapped pictures from different angles. Some of the photos came up with odd streaks of light, maybe the sun catching specks of dust in the breeze. Stepping up to the stone for a close-up, she gasped with astonishment. In a deep, broad hollow at the top lay a pile of coins. Thick and yellow-hued, they gleamed in the drizzle like the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
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What makes your featured book a must-read?
Set in Ireland with an Irish hero, it’s the ideal book to read for St. Patrick’s Day. If you love beautifully described Irish locations and a bit of magical Irish fairy lore, this is the book for you!
Giveaway – Enter to win an e-book bundle of all 23 books featured in the Pot O Gold Bookish Event: https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/92db7750101 Open Internationally. Runs March 11 – March 21, 2021. Winner will be drawn on March 22, 2021.
Author Biography:
Lori Herter grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, graduated from the University of Illinois, Chicago Campus, and worked for several years at the Chicago Association of Commerce & Industry. She married her husband, Jerry, a CPA, and they moved to Southern California a few decades ago. They still live there with their cat, Jasmine. They have traveled extensively in the U.S., Canada, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, and Tahiti. Lori’s favorite destination of all is Ireland. Over several trips to Ireland she has visited all parts of the island, both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Delving into Celtic legends and Celtic Spirituality has been a special interest of Lori’s in recent years, and is reflected in her novel THE THIN PLACE.
Lori has written romance novels published by Dell Candlelight Romances, Silhouette, and Harlequin. Some of these books are currently available as ebooks on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. She also wrote a four-book romantic vampire series published by Berkley with the titles OBSESSION, POSSESSION, CONFESSION, and ETERNITY. Her vampire novella, "Cimarron Spirit" is included in the EDGE OF DARKNESS anthology published by Berkley. CIMARRON SECRETS is the sequel novella to "Cimarron Spirit," and is Part 2 of her Cimarron Series. Part 3 is CIMARRON SEDUCTRESS. She’s also written a cozy mystery, THE CAT COLLECTOR.
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