Come meet award winning author and Webster resident, Claire Gem, who has just released the third in her Haunted Voices series titled “Civil Hearts”. The author has created another thrilling, supernatural suspense, this time set in the rural South, in an abandoned antebellum mansion. “Civil Hearts” is Gem’s sixth novel. Call 508-949-6232 for more information or visit www.clairegem.com.

About the book: “Civil Hearts,” is the story of a NYC widow, Liv Larson, who heads south to start her life over after losing her husband to brain cancer. She falls in love with an abandoned plantation home and sets about to restore it when she discovers she’s not living alone: the house is haunted by the ghost of a Confederate soldier.

Liv also finds herself falling for the local antiques dealer, Heath Barrow, whose solitary lifestyle is due to his unpredictable medical condition: Heath is epileptic.

“I try to create characters who are facing real-life challenges, even as they are also dealing with elements of the supernatural,” Gem says. “My hero in “Spirits of the Heart” is an alcoholic. The heroine of my women’s fiction, “The Phoenix Syndrome,” goes deaf. I gave the hero of “Civil Hearts” a very real though not often talked about chronic syndrome: epilepsy.”