New Novels Add a Chill to Fall
Biltmore's Dark Side
Asheville author Robert Beatty sets his new historical-fiction children’s book, Serafina and the Black Cloak, against the backdrop of the 250 rooms and 125,000 acres of forestland of the Biltmore Estate in the 1890s. Serafina secretly lives in the basement of the Biltmore house with her father, the estate’s maintenance man. When someone begins kidnapping the children of the estate, only she knows who is responsible: the man in a black cloak who stalks the shadowed corridors of her home at night.
Beatty exhaustively researched the history of the house and visited the estate more than 50 times to ensure that he was accurately depicting the chateau and this period in history. In the process, he adds some thrill to one of Western North Carolina’s most storied places. Serafina and the Black Cloak, released this past July by Disney-Hyperion, marks the first in a series.
Cut To The Bone
Known by locals as the “body farm,” the University of Tennessee at Knoxville’s Forensic Anthropology Research Center once again surfaces as the chilling setting of Jefferson Bass’s newest installment of the Body Farm series, The Breaking Point.
The real body farm is a place where experts and forensic anthropology students study the forensics of human decomposition. Begun in 1971 by forensic anthropologist William M. Bass, it doubles as the setting for a series of novels co-authored by Bass and Jon Jefferson. Under the pen name Jefferson Bass, they have combined Bass’s scientific knowledge and Jefferson’s storytelling skills to create nine novels that follow the studies, cases, and adventures of the fictional Bill Brockton. In their newest tale, Brockton’s life is thrown into turmoil as his professional career and world-renowned Body Farm research facility comes under question, a long-forgotten enemy threatens his life, and even his marriage is not quite what it seems. Jefferson Bass has created yet another novel that combines the eeriness of this local landmark with the fast-paced thrill of a crime novel.