Picture the Dead
by Adele Griffin and Lisa Brown
Just released: May 1, 2010
Description from the amazon:
A ghost will find his way home.
Jennie Lovell's life is the very picture of love and loss. First she is orphaned and forced to live at the mercy of her stingy, indifferent relatives. Then her fiancé falls on the battlefield, leaving her heartbroken and alone. Jennie struggles to pick up the pieces of her shattered life, but is haunted by a mysterious figure that refuses to let her bury the past.
When Jennie forms an unlikely alliance with a spirit photographer, she begins to uncover secrets about the man she thought she loved. With her sanity on edge and her life in the balance, can Jennie expose the chilling truth before someone-or something-stops her?
Against the brutal, vivid backdrop of the American Civil War, Adele Griffin and Lisa Brown have created a spellbinding mystery where the living cannot always be trusted and death is not always the end.
LIVE Event:
Picture the Dead
with authors Lisa Brown and Adele Griffin
and guest host Lemony Snicket
at The Booksmith
San Francisco
May 6, 7:30 pm
Your delightful presence is requested. Come in ghostly and/or Civil-War era costume, indulge in wonderful surprises, purchase a copy of Picture the Dead and have a "ghost picture" taken with our guests, and celebrate with us a remarkably excellent collaboration!
OR
Attend virtually via UStream with fellow bloggers Lisa and Laura.
And they will also be on the Teen Fire Chat discussing the event live.
You can also win a copy from them by leaving a comment on their site.
The hook:
What got me excited about going to this event is reading this from The Booksmith newsletter...
Lisa Brown’s stunning illustrations of daguerreotypes, family portraits and clues, along with a troubling mystery and more than one meddling spirit, give this historical illustrated novel a Cold Mountain feel for its teen audience.
Sample of daguerreotype:
unknown artist
Daguerreotype; 19.1 x 15.2 cm (7 1/2 x 6 in.)
Département des Estampes et de la Photographie,
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
Note: This story and mention of dagerreotype photos reminded me of the movie, The Others (2001), directed by Alejandro Amenábar, and starring Nicole Kidman.
There is part of the movie where a 'book of the dead' is presented. According to the wikipedia entry, the book shows mourning portraits taken in the 19th century of recently deceased corpses. Morbid, eh? But something that was actually done back then.
So, I'll be attending the event and get myself a copy which will probably be up for grabs after I read it.
~*~
* A daguerreotype (original French: daguerréotype) was the first large scale commercial photographic process.
It was developed by Louis Daguerre together with Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. Niepce had produced the first photographic image in the camera obscura using asphaltum on a copper plate sensitised with lavender oil that required very long exposures.
-wikipedia
