Laura DiSilverio--Tara, Manderley and . . . the Chateau du Cygne Noir?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: If we are celebrating the advent of fall, what better way to do it than to curl up with a good book? Not just any book, but the kind of suspense novel that got many of us reading, thrilling and enchanting us with a creepy setting, suspicious characters, and a heroine whose life might depend on figuring out the mystery just in time.

Well, you can make your cup of hot chocolate (or pumpkin latte) and enjoy THAT LAST WEEKEND, the brand new novel from our Jungle Red friend Laura DiSilverio! Laura gives us all of the above, plus not just one protagonist but four, searching for a murderer in the melancholy Chateau du Cygne Noir. 

AND Laura is giving away a copy to one of our commenters!

Every year for a decade, five college friends spent a weekend together at the atmospheric Chateau du Cygne Noir. Then, tragedy struck.
 

Ten years later, Laurel Muir returns to the castle for the first time since the accident, hoping to reconnect with her friends and lay the past to rest. When a murderer strikes, it rips open old wounds and forces the women to admit there's a killer in their midst. The remaining friends make a pact to unearth the truth, but suspicion, doubt, and old secrets threaten to tear them apart. Unsure who to trust, Laurel puts herself in harm's way, risking it all for friendship and long-delayed justice.

Just reading this gives me goosebumps. Laura, tell us more.

    

LAURA DISILVERIO:  In my high school years and early twenties, I devoured gothic novels where young governesses or secretaries accepted positions at moody mansions in remote locales and stumbled into secrets and dire peril. Murder, sinister retainers, ghosts and brooding men were staples of these books. I loved Daphne duMaurier, Dorothy Eden, Joan Aiken, Mary Stewart . . . I could go on and on. Gothic novels seem to have fallen out of favor, alas, but I have borrowed some elements for my latest release, THAT LAST WEEKEND, including the atmospheric old house.

           In THAT LAST WEEKEND, the house is the Chateau du Cygne Noir (Castle of the Black Swan), a French chateau relocated stone-by-stone from the Loire Valley to North Carolina where it's now a B&B. My protagonist, Laurel Muir, and her friends spent a girls weekend there every year for a decade, starting with spring breaks when they were in college. A tragedy occurs during that last weekend, and they don't assemble at the castle again for another ten years. I describe the chateau from several points of view, because it affects each character differently. Here is Geneva Frost's take on it:

            The Chateau du Cygne Noir bed and breakfast sign appeared suddenly. It featured elegant white script on a lavender background with a black swan. Wide stone pillars on either side of the driveway supported the decorative iron gate that was always open, and she turned in gingerly. The driveway’s sharp curves hid the castle until she came around the last bend and it burst into view. Its warm yellow stone seemed to soak up the sunlight and beam it back. Arched windows with their numerous small panes glinted. She’d loved the place the moment she set eyes on it that first spring break, almost as much as Vangie did. It had presence, a personality, the way the House of Usher or Manderley did. She knew Dawn would say “your English major is showing” if she shared her thoughts. The house wasn’t brooding, like Usher’s house, nor was it grand and forbidding like Rebecca’s Manderley, its stony façade repelling the nameless heroine. If Geneva were to assign an emotion to the chateau, she’d have to go with sad. No … melancholy. The stalwart home that should have been surrounded by fields of lavender and wine grapes, that had presided over the siege of Tournai and absorbed the blood of its scion on the cobbled courtyard and the screams of maidservants treated the way ill-disciplined armies treated women, felt displaced in this verdant corner of the New World. 

        Although THAT LAST WEEKEND is very much a modern suspense novel with four women in their late thirties trying to identify a murderer and reclaim a friendship that an old tragedy derailed, it's also an homage to the classic gothics, complete with sinister retainers (modernized as the B&B's managers) and the ghost of a young countess flung out of a window to her death. (Defenestration--I love that word!) It comes out this Friday, September 8th, and you can pre-order your copy right here. (Please.) 

         Did you read gothic novels? What were your faves? What houses/castles/mansions do you remember from books you've read? Do you ever think of the setting as a character in the novel?

        I'll be here to chat with you all day, and one lucky commenter will get a free copy of THAT LAST WEEKEND!

       

 Laura DiSilverio is the bestselling and award-winning author of 21 novels, including multiple mystery series and standalone suspense novels, and a Young Adult dystopian trilogy. She lives in Colorado where she is trying (with lots of home projects and Haagen Dazs) to come to terms with being an empty nester. 

DEBS: It seems to me that the gothic suspense novel is making a comeback, which couldn't make me happier. So interested to hear who else loved books like this.