Charleston Green: A Novel

by Stephanie Alexander

Overview

2021 Annie McDonnell Memorial Literary Award Finalist

2020 Chanticleer International Book Awards Finalist for Paranormal Division

2020 Publisher's Weekly BookLife Prize Quarter Finalist for Fiction

2020 Readers' Favorite Book Awards Silver Medalist for Paranormal Fiction

"I am always on the lookout for exciting new writers, and once I started reading Charleston Green by Stephanie Alexander, I was captivated. This novel leaves the reader entranced; the writing is skillful and clever and funny. I highly recommend this book." -New York Times Bestselling Author Elin Hilderbrand

"With humor, heart and a heaping helping of Southern Charm, Charleston Green brings an entirely new meaning to the term 'unwanted house guests.' Tipsy is a lovable, flawed, complex heroine that readers will root for from the first page to the last-and pitch-perfect storytelling will leave fans begging for a sequel. This is Stephanie Alexander at her best!" -USA Today Bestselling Author of Feels Like Falling, Kristy Woodson Harvey

If Tipsy Collins learned one thing from her divorce, it's that everyone in Charleston is a little crazy-even if they're already dead.

Tipsy, a gifted artist, cannot ignore her nutty friends or her vindictive ex-husband, but as a lifelong reluctant clairvoyant, she's always avoided dead people. When Tipsy and her three children move into the house on Bennett Street, she realizes some ghosts won't be ignored.

Till death do us part didn't pan out for Jane and Henry Mott, who've haunted the house for nearly a century. Tipsy's marriage was downright felicitous when compared to Jane and Henry's ill-fated union. Jane believes Henry killed her and then himself, and Henry vehemently denies both accusations. Unfortunately, neither phantom remembers that afternoon in 1923. Tipsy doesn't know whether to side with Jane, who seems to be hiding something under her southern belle charm, or Henry, a mercurial creative genius. Jane and Henry draw Tipsy into their conundrum, and she uncovers secrets long concealed under layers of good manners, broken promises and soupy Lowcountry air. Living with ghosts, however, takes a toll on her health, and possibly even her sanity. As she struggles to forge a new path for herself and her children, Tipsy has a chance to set Jane and Henry free, and release the ghosts of her own past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647040505
Publisher:	Bublish, Inc.
Publication date:	04/14/2020
Pages:	362
Sales rank:	221,486
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

Stephanie Alexander is a writer and a family law attorney. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband, their blended family of five children, and their miniature dachshund, Trinket.

Editorial Reviews

2020-03-06
In Alexander’s lighthearted supernatural mystery, a newly single clairvoyant attempts to crack a cold case involving the ghosts that haunt her residence.

Tipsy Collins, the recently divorced mother of three, just wants to get her life in order. She’s hoping the move into an old house in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, will give her the space to figure out who she is again. The only problem? Tipsy is a clairvoyant—albeit a reluctant one. It’s an ability she’s had since childhood, though she’s learned to ignore the ghosts that she’s occasionally seen and heard since then. The house in Mount Pleasant, however, is home to two ghosts, Jane and Henry Mott, and as soon as she moves in Tipsy makes the mistake of acknowledging them. What’s more, the two ghosts are not on speaking terms. Jane claims that Henry is responsible for their deaths—that he killed Jane and then himself—but Henry insists otherwise. “Supposedly she was murdered. Perhaps I did commit suicide,” says the sensitive specter. “I have faults. Too many to name. But I’m not a murderer.” Now, in addition to trying to wrest alimony from her ex, restart her stalled career as a painter, and dip her toes back into the dating world, Tipsy needs to solve a double murder from 1923 in order to put her ghostly roommates to rest. Alexander blends the warm humor of her characters with balmy descriptions of her Southern gothic setting. Her descriptions of Tipsy’s paintings are particularly lyrical: “She blended the paints into an autumnal spectrum, tinting burnt orange to pumpkin and shading white to cream to caramel. Most of the lightest tones went to his shirt and skin. A gradual fade of auburn to russet brown in his freckles and brows and lashes eased the bright red shock of his hair.” It’s a breezy paranormal read, and yet one with more depth than the reader might expect from the premise. In Tipsy and her ghosts, Alexander finds a story about the frustrations of love and aging, as well as the weight that history places on the living, particularly, perhaps, in the South Carolina Lowcountry.

An enchanting novel of a woman finding her way out of a midlife (and mid-death) crisis.

Kirkus Reviews