Crane's View

Series · 3 books · 1997-2001

By Jonathan Carroll

Books in series

Kissing the Beehive

1997

Desperate for inspiration, a writer revisits a long-forgotten crime After nine books, three wives, and a massive advance for his as-yet-unwritten next novel, Sam Boyd has run out of ideas. He tries to write but his characters are dull, lifeless. So his thoughts turn to his hometown, and the tragedy he once encountered there. Boyd was fifteen when he found Pauline Ostrova floating in the Hudson River. The official verdict was murder, and the girl's ex-boyfriend was convicted. But decades later, Boyd remains certain that the killer still lives in his bucolic Hudson town—and he's determined to write his next book about what really happened. He has come home for inspiration, but the longer he stays, the more Boyd's investigation spirals toward madness and a final, shocking conclusion.

The Marriage of Sticks

1999

Miranda Romanac is a successful thirtysomething woman in today's modern world, yet she feels alone and adrift on the sea of her life. At her high school reunion she makes a shattering discovery that further undermines her already shaky sense of who she is and where she is going. When she meets the remarkable Hugh Oakley, her life takes a 180-degree turn for the better—but at what price? When they move to a house in the country to start a new life together, the reality Miranda had once known begins to slip away. Miranda is haunted by alarming, impossible visions and strangers whom she feels certain she has known, although they are all from other times and places. As these phantom lives consume her own and begin to affect all that she knows and loves, Miranda must learn the truth to reclaim it. But sometimes the hardest truth to accept is the knowledge of who we really are.

The Wooden Sea

2001

The Wooden Sea is the final novel in The Crane's View Trilogy from award-winning British fantasy author Jonathan Carrol. From the moment a three-legged dog limps into the life of Police Chief Frannie McCabe and drops dead at his feet, McCabe finds himself in a new world of disturbing miracles. His small town of Crane's View, New York has long been a haven of harmony and comfort—but now he finds himself afflicted by the inexplicable, by omens that converge to throw his life into doubt. And what he does over the next few days may have consequences for the whole world ...

Author

Jonathan Carroll

Author · 28 books

Jonathan Carroll (b. 1949) is an award-winning American author of modern fantasy and slipstream novels. His debut book, The Land of Laughs (1980), tells the story of a children’s author whose imagination has left the printed page and begun to influence reality. The book introduced several hallmarks of Carroll’s writing, including talking animals and worlds that straddle the thin line between reality and the surreal, a technique that has seen him compared to South American magical realists. Outside the Dog Museum (1991) was named the best novel of the year by the British Fantasy Society, and has proven to be one of Carroll’s most popular works. Since then he has written the Crane’s View trilogy, Glass Soup (2005) and, most recently, The Ghost in Love (2008). His short stories have been collected in The Panic Hand (1995) and The Woman Who Married a Cloud (2012). He continues to live and write in Vienna.