The Ghost at the Table: (Shannon Ravenel Books (Hardcover))

Strikingly different since childhood and leading dissimilar lives now, sisters Frances and Cynthia have managed to remain "devoted"--as long as they stay on opposite coasts. When Frances arranges to host Thanksgiving at her idyllic New England farmhouse, she envisions a happy family reunion, one that will include the sisters' long-estranged father. Cynthia, however, doesn't understand how Frances can ignore the past their father's presence revives, a past that includes suspicions about their mother's death twenty-five years earlier. As Thanksgiving Day arrives, with a houseful of guests looking forward to dinner, the sisters continue to struggle with different versions of a shared past, their conflict escalating to a dramatic, suspenseful climax.

Review :
"Right away . . . you know her story and her style are going to be worth your time and hers--and you are hooked."--"USA Today" "The situations [Berne] creates are so compelling--and so disturbingly familiar--that it's hard not to be drawn in when everyone's secrets begin to unravel." --"The Boston Globe" " Right away . . . you know her story and her style are going to be worth your time and hers-- and you are hooked." -- "USA Today" " The situations [Berne] creates are so compelling-- and so disturbingly familiar-- that it's hard not to be drawn in when everyone's secrets begin to unravel." -- "The Boston Globe" "A witty, moving and psychologically astute story about siblings and the disparate ways they remember common experiences from childhood. . . . Wholly engaging, the perfect spark for launching a rich conversation around your own table once the dishes have been cleared." --Washington Post Book World "Delicious. . . . Berne turns a witty tale of holiday dysfunction into a transfixing borderline gothic, her appealing heroine into an unreliable narrator seething with decades-old resentment. Grade: A." --Entertainment Weekly A "taut psychological drama...Berne takes an inherently dramatic conflict--one sister's intention to obfuscate the hard truths of the past vs. another's determination to drag them under a spotlight--and ratchets up the stakes with astute observation and narrative cunning." --"Publishers Weekly" " A witty, moving and psychologically astute story about siblings and the disparate ways they remember common experiences from childhood. . . . Wholly engaging, the perfect spark for launching a rich conversation around your own table once the dishes have been cleared." -- Washington Post Book World " Delicious. . . . Berne turns a witty tale of holiday dysfunction into a transfixing borderline gothic, her appealing heroine into an unreliable narrator seething with decades-old resentment. Grade: A." -- Entertainment Weekly A " taut psychological drama...Berne takes an inherently dramatic conflict-- one sister's intention to obfuscate the hard truths of the past vs. another's determination to drag them under a spotlight-- and ratchets up the stakes with astute observation and narrative cunning." -- "Publishers Weekly"