About the BookSamuel Roberts, a lawyer in Champaign, Illinois, has just moved to a new home to escape the memories of his old place—the stray body parts left by evil entities as well as traces of his relationship with Susan, who left him because he couldn’t stop risking both their lives trying to save the world. That leaves Sam free to fall in love again. Sam falls hard, suspiciously hard, for Bridget Gillis, a beautiful fortune teller who also happens to be a witch and a member of a coven. The village that encompasses the coven was founded by Bridget’s great-great aunt, also named Bridget and a dead ringer for her descendant. The new relationship quickly gets complicated. It is two days before Halloween, and Bridget is about to be tried by her fellow witches for the crime of practicing dark magic involving the blood of children. The punishment is to be burned at the stake. Bridget needs an advocate, and Sam is the perfect man for the job.
Sam brings in Bob, who is suspicious of his best buddy’s sudden passion. The two of them have until the Witching Hour on Halloween to clear Bridget’s name and find out who is killing the local children. As they comb the area for clues, quiz the locals, and take a crash course in witchcraft and Wiccan customs, Sam and Bob can’t shake the question: is Bridget a good witch or a bad witch?
The Wiccan Witch of the Midwest is the fourth book in the Samuel Roberts Thriller series, which began with Cocaine Zombies and continued with Ruler of Demons and The Fraternity of the Soul Eater.
My Review
Fall.
It's a usually a happy time of year when children rustle through pumpkin patches, and tractors kick up dust harvesting the fields. It's sunlight on colorful leaves. It's apples from the orchard. It's heading out to the nearest farm and enjoying the last of what Mother Nature has to offer before the chill of winter sets in.
But Sam's not so lucky. He's already starting to feel the chill when he visits,
"A village populated by witches in the heart of Amish Country."
What he stumbles across is a community that's over a hundred years old with storefronts that resemble something out of an old Western—a candlemaker, a butcher, a booksmith. For Sam, his sense of disorientation is immediate.
"Perhaps that is why this place is so unsettling. It was the juxtaposition of the modern with the archaic."
The inhabitants who live in this isolated part of Champaign County aren't interested in pumpkin soup, pumpkin quiche or pumpkin ravioli. Instead, they're anxiously awaiting All Hallow's Eve to see if one of their own will be burned at the stake.
The quaint environment doesn't seem so quaint when Sam finds out that several Amish children in this rural part of Illinois have gone missing, never to be seen again. But the funny thing is not one parent has notified the authorities. Why? They've been placed under a spell not to.
Sam's heart goes out to these hard-working Amish families, even when they come at him with fear in their eyes, brandishing shotguns and yelling at him to get out. They make their living off the land, and now the land is turning against them. Their livestock is dying. Their crops are failing. Their children are being taken right out of their own homes. And they know the witches are to blame, even if they can't voice their suspicions aloud.
And that puts Sam in a quite a quandary. He's been hired by the witch accused of kidnapping these kids to defend her against the charges leveled at her by the community of elders. The witches want to put her to death because she's placing their very existence in jeopardy. She's put them at risk, exposing them to the outside world, and they're not going to let her get away with it. They intend to hold her accountable for the deaths of these children.
But their system of justice isn't exactly cut and dry. There's no sharing of evidence, no witness lists. There aren't even any legal precedents for Sam to follow.
"No one has ever broken a rule of the coven."
Until one of them sought immortality by hoping to consume the fruit of the Blood Thorn, much like Eve in the Garden of Eden. When Sam checks out this voracious plant firsthand, the ground around it is littered with the bones of its young victims, turning Sam's stomach like a twisted, new version of "Sweeney Todd."
"A spell or potion could help alleviate almost any problem in life."
But not for the witches. Not this time. The Blood Thorns' fruit is only ripe one day of the year—Halloween. And it's up to Sam to prove that one witch did not seek to betray the rest by plotting to consume its powers. Or did she?
***
The Wiccan Witch of the Midwest can be purchased at:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Formats/Prices: $4.99 ebook, $13.95 paperback
Genre: Paranormal, Mystery, Thriller
Pages: 230
Release: October 31, 2015
Publisher: Camel Press
ISBN: 9781603812917
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About the AuthorAuthor and attorney Scott A. Lerner resides in Champaign, Illinois. He obtained his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and went on to obtain his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign. He is currently a sole practitioner in Champaign, Illinois. The majority of his law practice focuses on the fields of criminal law and family law. Lerner’s first novel and the first Samuel Roberts Thriller, Cocaine Zombies, won a bronze medal in the mystery/cozy/noir category of the 2013 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Awards. The second book in the series is Ruler of Demons. The Fraternity of the Soul Eater is book 3. Book 4, The Wiccan Witch of the Midwest, will be released on Halloween, 2015.
Links to connect with Scott:
Web Site
Goodreads
Blog Tour Site
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