Finding Grace: a Novel

February 7, 2022
At the start of this engrossing paranormal thriller from Thomas (All That’s Left of Me), 33-year-old New York bartender Louise learns that her chronically unstable mother, Grace, is at Bellevue Hospital after being found singing to herself on the George Washington Bridge. Against her better judgment, Louise decides to pick up Grace and let her estranged mother stay at her apartment. Grace warns Louise that a young girl they both know is in grave danger, and they must drive across the country to save her. Jaded by years of her mother’s shenanigans, Louise reluctantly agrees to head for California, where 12-year-old Melanie, who lives with her fourth set of foster parents, fears she’s at risk of losing them after an entity that nobody else can hear or see warns her that something bad is about to happen. Thomas keeps the reader guessing what’s going on as she shifts between the perspectives of Louise, Grace, and Melanie en route to the touching, bittersweet ending. Flashbacks to Louise’s youth movingly explore mother-daughter relationships. Those who value character-driven suspense will be rewarded. Agent: Wendy Sherman, Wendy Sherman Assoc.

February 1, 2022
Thomas follows All That's Left of Me (2018) with another thriller that mixes hints of the paranormal with definite indications of imminent danger. Twelve-year-old Melanie isn't crazy about her current foster parents, Ray and Delilah James, but although they have their quirks--Delilah, for instance, repeatedly bakes pans of brownies she throws into the trash--she wouldn't want to do anything to undermine her life with them. That's why she's never told them about Penny, the girl who lives in her hand and writes her messages like "Somebody's coming for you." Someone is indeed coming for Melanie: Grace Daniels, a nonpracticing nurse who's been languishing in Bellevue Hospital, and Louise, the adult daughter who's so daunted by the mental illness of her mother, who's heard voices for many years, that she put her own out-of-wedlock daughter up for adoption shortly after birth to protect baby Edie from Grace's influence and to protect Louise herself from the possibility of having to deal with two disturbed relatives at once. Learning that Grace wants to see her, Louise steels herself to visit her mother and finds herself signing the discharge papers that will make her responsible for Grace on their long trip to find Edie. All the while, Melanie is repeatedly promised acceptance by her schoolmates and foster parents, but every promise is thwarted or, worse, traumatically misconstrued. As Louise learns against the odds to trust the mother she's spent half her lifetime denying, Penny keeps warning Melanie about impending doom. Even though most readers will figure out the relations among the characters long before Thomas reveals them, few will predict either the perpetrator or the victim of the climactic act of violence that brings them all together. An authentically creepy tale for anyone who cares to look beyond, or into, those voices.

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