Ripper

by Amy Carol Reeves

Overview

"I felt hot breath on my neck, and, horrified, I knew that he stood behind me . . ." It's 1888, and after her mother's sudden death, Abbie is sent to live with her grandmother in a posh London neighborhood. When she begins volunteering at Whitechapel Hospital, Abbie finds she has a passion for helping the abused and sickly women there. But within days, patients begin turning up murdered at the hands of Jack the Ripper. As more women are murdered, Abbie realizes that she and the Ripper share a strange connection: she has visions showing the Ripper luring his future victims to their deaths-moments before he turns his knife upon them. Her desperation to stop the massacres leads Abbie on a perilous hunt for the killer. And her search leads to a mysterious brotherhood whose link to the Ripper threatens not just London but all of mankind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780738732701
Publisher:	North Star Editions
Publication date:	04/08/2012
Series:	A Ripper Novel , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	360
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Amy Carol Reeves has a PhD in 19^th century British Literature and a master’s degree in British Literature from the University of South Carolina. She became entranced by the idea for Ripper, her debut novel, after meeting Donald Rumbelow, a world-recognized expert on Jack the Ripper. Reeves is currently an adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina, and lives with her husband and two children in Columbia, S.C. For more information, visit her online at: AmyCarolReeves.com.

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Editorial Reviews

"Well written . . . Reeves cleverly uses one of the most heinous figures from history to tell a gothic tale with a paranormal twist." —VOYA

From the Publisher

A rebellious young woman of high station finds her calling--and much more--volunteering in an East London hospital just as the Jack the Ripper murders commence. Abbie Sharp, newly orphaned, finds herself chafing under the restrictions imposed by her snooty grandmother, who threw her mother out years before for her wild ways. Grandmother's attempt to teach Abbie responsibility by making her work at the charity hospital backfires when the girl becomes increasingly interested in the welfare of its prostitute patients. Abbie, meanwhile, finds herself more reliant on the street-fighting skills she picked up in Dublin than she ever expected. And she's also having visions… What could they mean? Narrator Abbie is a boilerplate spunky heroine, and she falls into an equally formulaic romance with a prickly-but-deep handsome physician. Debut author Reeves holds a PhD in 19th-century British literature, and she brings her research to bear on the background story. She appears to have decided not to apply it to her prose, however, which is littered with colloquially modern constructions ("I am simply going to have to be all right with…"; "[it] was fine with me"). Abbie performs astonishing feats of athleticism without ever being hampered by her skirt. Moreover, the paranormal twist feels wrenched into place. For more effective reboots of the Jack the Ripper legend, try Maureen Johnson's The Name of the Star (2011) or Stefan Petrucha's Ripper (2012). Skip. (Paranormal historical fiction. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews