Bøger af Gail Lukasik

"An early-autumn treat fit for late-night devouring." --Publishers Weekly "A taut gothic mystery with an intriguing twist." --Susanna Calkins, award-winning author of the Lucy Campion Mysteries and the Speakeasy Murders A Ghostly Window Into the Past Nurse Nellie Lester can't escape death. Fleeing Chicago at the height of the 1918 Spanish flu, she takes a nursing job at a decrepit mansion on a desolate Michigan island. She's convinced the island holds the secret to her mother's murky past. The only problem? Her dead mother seems to have followed her there. Nightly she's haunted by a ghostly presence that appears in her bedroom. But is it her mother or something more sinister?When the frozen body of the prior nurse is unearthed, Nellie suspects her family's history and the nurse's uncanny death are connected to a mysterious group that disappeared from the island twenty-four years earlier.As winter closes in, past and present collide resurrecting a lurid killer, hell-bent on keeping the island's secrets. Will Nellie uncover her mother's shocking past before the killer enacts his final revenge?"Lukasik blends all the elements needed for a dark suspense novel: a forbidding mansion, ghostly presences, secret passages, a hostile housekeeper, a temperamental employer, and residents unwilling to talk to outsiders. For fans of Rebecca, The Woman in White, and The Death of Mrs. Westaway." --Library Journal

From acclaimed bestselling author of White Like Her: My Family's Story of Race and Racial Passing, comes a brand new collection of stories of people uncovering their past.What They Never Told Us tells the stories of ordinary people who made extraordinary, life-changing discoveries about their parentage and/or race and ethnicity that fractured their identities. The book asks the big questions: Who are we? And what is family? Blending social history and personal narratives, each story delves into the devastating psychological trauma of uncovering a hidden family secret with all the twists and turns of a mystery novel from how the discovery was made; to why it was kept secret; to the arduous, sometimes disappointing, quest to find the biological parent or parents. To fully understand the secrecy surrounding these family secrets, the book examines pre-WWII and post-WWII attitudes toward infertility, adoption, donor conception, race and racial passing, and unmarried pregnant women. Interspersed throughout these harrowing narratives is the author's own confusing and sometimes painful journey to redefine her racial identity under the spotlight of public opinion. Searingly raw and honest, What They Never Told Us tells the stories that were never meant to be heard.

Determined to make a fresh start after beating cancer, Chicagoan Leigh Girard leaves a failed marriage and a teaching career and moves to Egg Harbor, Wisconsin. Her first assignment as a writer for the local newspaper is an obituary feature on Carl Peck, a carpenter who died suddenly while hospitalized. His widow is claiming medical negligence. But as Leigh looks into the story, she finds something far worse: possible murder. Leigh's suspicions are confirmed when it's discovered that Peck, an amateur naturalist, died from mushroom poisoning. The case turns even more puzzling when the Pecks' daughter attempts to take her own life shortly after her good friend, the local librarian, kills herself. In the process of solving Peck's murder, Leigh uncovers another murder committed twenty years earlier that links the past with the present. As she probes the heart of of a tragic mystery, Leigh learns the survival instincts that have carried her this far are about to be tested against a clever killer.

A mystery author uncovers the truth of her own racial heritage in this memoir of family and racial passing-as seen on PBS's Genealogy Roadshow.Gail Lukasik's mother Alvera had a secret she was determined to take to the grave. Though she lived as a white woman with a white family, she had been born Black. White Like Her is the story of Alvera's "e;passing,"e; Gail's struggle with the shame of her mother's choice, and her subsequent journey of self-discovery and redemption.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 eighteenth-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race, heritage, and her own identity.Foreword written by Kenyatta Berry, host of PBS's Genealogy Roadshow

As seen on The Today Show and in the Washington Post's most inspiring stories of the year! “Important in helping us understand America’s complex racial history.”—Kenyatta D. Berry, Host of PBS’s Genealogy RoadshowIncludes a new afterword by bestselling author and Philadelphia Inquirer journalist Solomon Jones In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, author Gail Lukasik explores her African-American 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 eighteenth-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she views race and heritage. With a foreword written by Kenyatta Berry, host of PBS’s Genealogy Roadshow, and brand-new afterword written by bestselling author Solomon Jones, White Like Her is a unique and fascinating story of self-discovery and redemption that breaks down barriers.