What's inside "The Gentling Box" ?

Sure, the author of The Gentling Box, Lisa Mannetti, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for best first novel, but what really makes her interesting is her hobby - making macabre gothic greeting cards based on cemetery photos she takes.

The girl likes to hang around graveyards and take pictures? Ahhh... a woman after my own heart.

If you're into gypsy curses, ghostly possessions, and a woman chopping off her own arm then The Gentling Box is a must read for you.

Synopsis
The philosophies of the Age of Enlightenment create sweeping changes throughout 19th Century Europe, but to Hungary's despised nomads, the gypsies, the world is still a dark and very dangerous landscape. Adversaries both mortal and supernatural lurk in the shadows, waiting to strike without mercy. Imre, a half-gypsy horse trader, understands the danger to his small family all too well.

Cursed with a hideously-disfiguring and fatal disease by the vengeful sorceress Anyeta, he watches those around him suffer and fall. Mimi, his wife, who is tricked into cutting off her own arm to create a powerful talisman. His friend Constantin, struck mute by Anyeta's wrath. And Lenore, his and Mimi's young daughter, who has been placed in the greatest jeopardy of all. With his health deteriorating and death imminent, his wife possessed by the witch's ghost and Lenore being groomed for a fate far worse than death, Imre turns to desperate measures and a hellish memory from his childhood—to still the sorceress and end her reign of bloodshed. A presence even more powerful and terrifying to him than Anyeta: the gentling box.

Details
Paperback: 316 pages
Publisher: DarkHart Press (October 25, 2008)
# ISBN-13: 978-0978731892

What? Ya want to gripe about it being an old release? Blame it on the housekeeper, who's been missing for about a year now. No telling where that ol' bat disappeared to. She didn't even clean up the blood stains.

Anyway, I'll be digging up some fresh meat soon so check back later.