Gilda Joyce: The Bones of the Holy

by Jennifer Allison

Overview

When Gilda Joyce's mother announces her engagement to a man from St. Augustine, Florida, Gilda is appalled. She hasn't even given him the "Joyce Family Application" yet! But as the wedding preparations get under way, Gilda realizes she has much bigger concerns. Why does her soon-to-be stepdad keep calling Mrs. Joyce by his ex-wife's name? And why is Mrs. Joyce acting like she's possessed?

With only a few short days before her mother says "I do," Gilda knows this much for sure: it's going to take every ounce of her sleuthing skill and psychic savvy to solve this one!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101551042
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	06/09/2011
Series:	Gilda Joyce
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	354 KB
Age Range:	10 Years

About the Author

Jennifer Allison grew up in a small town in Michigan, and holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from American University. Her various careers have included work as a news reporter and high school English teacher. She has also held numerous odd jobs—piano player in a shopping mall, assembly-line worker for General Motors, waitress, preschool teacher—that have helped her generate ideas for characters and stories. Allison currently lives in Chicago, with her husband, Michael, and their three children—Max, and the twins, Marcus and Genevieve (“Gigi”).

Editorial Reviews

Uber-cool teen sleuth Gilda Joyce has to step in when her mother's new life threatens danger. Pragmatic mom has suddenly gone ga-ga over a plump antiques dealer named Eugene Pook and plans to marry and live with him in St. Augustine, Florida. Gilda does not despair. Armed with her deceased dad's typewriter, her notebooks and her disguises, including a plumed hat, Gilda decides to penetrate the heart of a decades-old mystery involving a ghost in a white gown who looks just like her mother. Local author Jennifer Allison blends the chilling with the comedic in stylish writing that skillfully shifts point of view to offer a nuanced, deeply felt novel with an intricate plot. This fifth book in the unique Gilda Joyce series will leave readers hungry for the sixth. Reviewer: Mary Quattlebaum

Children's Literature - Mary Quattlebaum

In this fifth Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator installment, amateur sleuth Gilda travels to historic St. Augustine to encounter a ghostly woman in white and ends up literally buried in another baffling mystery.

Horrified when her mother returns from a getaway weekend in St. Augustine engaged to an antiques dealer named Eugene Pook, whom she met on the Internet and plans to marry immediately, Gilda experiences her "psychic signal," a tickling in her left ear, warning something unusual or dangerous is about to occur. Arriving in St. Augustine for the wedding, Gilda finds Eugene to be "older, plump, walruslike" and definitely weird. She loves the ghost tour of St. Augustine, "one of the most haunted cities in the entire United States," but is surprised when Eugene's 12-year-old neighbor confesses she's seen a spectral woman in white in his house. Gilda discovers Eugene had been jilted years before by his fiancée, Charlotte, who looked just like Gilda's mother and mysteriously vanished. Now Eugene seems to be re-creating his aborted wedding. Could the woman in white be Charlotte's ghost? Local ghost tales, Gilda's spy records, letters and travelogue flesh out the account of how this sassy wannabe investigator tries to save her mother from Charlotte's fate.

Gilda fans will rally to her latest caper, while newcomers should revel in her ghostly escapades in old St. Augustine. (Mystery. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews