Showing results by author "Gail Lukasik" in All Categories

In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother's decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother's fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother's racial lineage, tracing her family back to 18th-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage.

Chicago performance artist Rose Caffrey is desperate to sell her sister's 19th-century farmhouse in Southern Illinois. She's haunted by her sister's death from a fall inside the house. But when Rose discovers three murals in an upstairs bedroom depicting strange images of Native Americans and bizarre 19th-century landscapes, she becomes obsessed with knowing the artist's identity and the meaning of the murals.

An amateur naturalist dies of mushroom poisoning, a day later the local librarian kills herself, then the buried bones of an infant are discovered. Chicago native Leigh Girard is finding life in a small town can be fatal. Determined to start a new life after her mastectomy, Leigh flees to Wisconsin's Door County peninsula, where she takes a job as reporter for the local newspaper. Her first assignment, the naturalist's obituary, turns into a hunt for a murderer.

On the eve of tourist season in the resort community of Doo County, Wisconsin, a killer is targeting young blond women, leaving their strangled bodies along the desolate Mink River. The killer ritualistically arranges the bodies to mimic sleep, except for the long blond hair, brushed over their faces, and his deadly calling card, a purple band wound around the victim’s ring finger - a macabre symbol of love.

Twenty-three years ago, local actress Danielle Moyer vanished after starring in a play at the Bayside Theater. Her body was never found. Now the specter of her ghost has returned to haunt the Bayside Theater or - so it seems. A series of pranks is plaguing the theater, and someone is leaving bizarre clues in the abandoned Moyer cabin. Door County Gazette reporter Leigh Girard, who's writing an article on the theater, chalks the pranks up to theatrical hijinks.

Nurse Nellie Lester thinks she can escape death. Fleeing Chicago at the height of the 1918 Spanish flu, she takes a nursing job at a decrepit manor on a desolate Michigan island. She’s convinced the island holds the secret to her family’s murky past. Soon after her arrival, the frozen body of the prior nurse is unearthed. Haunted nightly by a ghostly presence, Nellie is convinced the nurse’s murder and her father’s fate are connected and dives into the mystery.