The oracle at Stoneleigh Court

by Peter Hillsman Taylor

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Summons to Memphis, here is a haunting new collection of stories that examine lost love, retribution, second chances, human perversities ... and ghosts. Peter Taylor draws us again into a world that he has made distinctively his own in his fiction, the comfortable society of affluent Tennesseeans - men and women of good character, with a sense of family, of style, and an awareness of the past that has shaped them. Yet for all. Their rootedness, other forces - often alien - intervene to change the course of fate in these entrancing, often chilling tales. In the long title story, we see the widow of a Tennessee congressman, long established in Washington, D.C., making ruthless use of her unearthly powers to play matchmaker for her shy young nephew. In "Demons," a young boy hears voices that others do not (and which foretell his cousin's ruin). "The Witch of Owl Mountain Springs" is an aged. Spinster who carries out her revenge on the man who be