In the tradition of Fannie Flagg, veteran storyteller Helen Chappell, acclaimed author of Giving Up the Ghost, presents a wry, funny, and poignant novel about two sisters, their dead mother, and a Chesapeake Bay town where anything can happen and frequently does. Sometimes you have to go home again, even if you know the trip is going to be one from hell. When Carrie points her van in the direction of Oysterback, Maryland, her old hometown, she does it only because she has no choice. Her momma, the indomitable Audrey, has done the unthinkable: she's died. And it wasn't a neat little Oysterback death either. No, it happened in Florida and involved an alligator. But, then again, there was nothing conventional about Audrey, even in life. The same could be said for her daughter Carrie -- single, perpetually searching, and professionally adrift, she has become an expert at yard sales, sifting through the detritus of other folks' lives, then reselling it to shops that sell antiques and assorted "collectibles." Her sister, Earlene, considers Carrie a junk collector, but then Earlene has devoted her life to being conventional. Married with two boys, she has remained in Oysterback where she and her husband run the View 'n' Chew, a combination video store-sandwich shop. Momma had lived by the notion that a woman is incomplete without a man and spent the years following her husband's death trying to be as complete as humanly possible -- in the process working her way through a whole parade of men. As best Carrie can figure, her momma's last two flames were Alonzo Deaver, the town's resident miscreant and a current resident of the state penitentiary, and Jack Shepherd, a college professor on the run from failure and boredom. Both had been granted carte blanche to crash at Momma's house whenever the occasion should arise (be it Alonzo's planned escape from prison or Jack's escape from his ratty little boat). Once back in Oysterback, Carrie finds herself unwittingly caught up in a family drama of epic proportions -- including Earlene's resentment (which leads to a classic -- and very messy -- confrontation), a now-married ex-boyfriend's attempt to rekindle an old flame, her own attraction to Professor Jack, and a roiling stew of anger and grief over Momma's poorly timed passing. For while Carrie never expected to go home again, she naively believed it always would be there. A Whole World of Trouble is a delightfully authentic comedy of Southern manners and an antic, frequently hilarious, pointed, and moving novel by a writer who knows the people and the world she writes about.

Helen Chappell, an award-winning Eastern Shore author, now brings you A Fright of Ghosts, the fifth novel in her sought after "Sam and Hollis Mystery" series. Hollis's dead ex-husband, Sam, drops in on her at both opportune and inopportune times, assisting the reporter in solving the mystery of Shellpile Island. Hollis's brother Robbie is accused of murder when he awakens to find a bloody body on the dock next to his workboat. Why are all the homes of poverty-striken Shellpile Island sporting new additions? Where did the residents find the money to buy all those new trucks? Sluggo's three wives lure Hollis into their trap not knowing that a 300-year-old pirate has their number. Join Sam, Hollis, and the residents of Shellpile to find out if Hollis gets out of this one alive.

"There is a romantic, nostalgic, pleasantly melancholy feeling to old cemeteries that is hard to define but easy to experience. Perhaps it is because we can feel the direct link to our past that no history book, no movie, no historical fantasy can ever convey. These stones and these unkempt grounds are the hard evidence of lives that came before us. Once, these people lived and breathed, loved, worked, fought, hoped and despaired, and experienced their triumphs and failures just as we do today. And, although we seldom care to acknowledge it, we will inevitably go where they have gone."--from the Preface

For the many people who enjoy walking through old cemeteries, exploring forgotten and overgrown graveyards, and reading the names, dates, and epitaphs of the dead, the Chesapeake Bay region offers a rich assortment of final resting places, many dating back to the early 1600s. From Williamsburg to Havre de Grace, it is not uncommon to see a number of the living wandering among the markers of the dead. Some are genealogists and historians, others come in search of quietude and a tangible connection to the past.

In "The Chesapeake Book of the Dead," Helen Chappell and photographer Starke Jett survey this rich legacy, from the vast and imposing Arlington National Cemetery to lone graves so modest as to have been lost almost as soon as they were dug. Chappell and Jett visit graveyards of the famous and the obscure, wander through cemeteries dotted with both elaborate funerary and simple, weather-beaten headstones, and discover epitaphs that range from the literary to the amusing to the poignant. As old grave sites disappear under developers' bulldozers, through neglect, and at the hands of unscrupulous headstone collectors, this remarkable book offers a unique and elegiac look at our past and its tales of love and tragedy.

Among the cemeteries explored are Southeast Washington's Congressional Cemetery (posthumous home to composer John Philip Sousa, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, pioneering feminist and muckraking journalist Anne Royall, and Choctaw chief and notable military tactician Pushmataha); Baltimore's Green Mount Cemetery (built in the 1830s as Baltimore's first sylvan graveyard); and Westminster Burying Ground in downtown Baltimore. At Westminster lies the grave of Edgar Allan Poe, which a mysterious figure visits each year on Poe's birthday to leave roses and a bottle of brandy. The book also describes the final resting places for such celebrities as Dorothy Parker (Chappell located her ashes at the NAACP headquarters in Baltimore), F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (buried in Rockville at Scott's wish, because, he insisted, "I belong here," in Maryland, "where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite"), and cosmopolitan actress Tallulah Bankhead (interred in a plot her sister provided near Chestertown).

Included throughout this fascinating book are essays on mourning fashion and deathbed performances, graveyard ghost stories, discussions of efforts to save historic cemeteries, and notes from the diary of a nineteenth-century doctor who today is buried in Rising Sun Cemetery alongside many of his patients. Chappell's lively prose, accompanied by Jett's haunting black-and-white photographs, will delight all those drawn to the seclusion, peacefulness, and melancholy of old graveyards.

Jacket illustration: Lower Hooper's Island, Maryland

Once you find yourself in Oysterback, you may never want to leave. Nothing beats Desiree Grinch's corn soup at the Blue Crab Tavern. There's never a wait at the Curl Up 'N'Dye Salon de Beaute. In season, you can buy your produce (as you pay your respects) at Dreedle's Funeral Parlor. There's bingo every Tuesday at the V.F.D. The Mosquito Festival is next week. And when the moon hangs over Widgeon Marsh as full and yellow as one of Miss Nettie's oyster fritters, you'll know you're in a place like no other. Since 1988, readers of the "Baltimore Sun" have delighted in regular visits to Oysterback - Helen Chappell's mythical town on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Chappell's stories capture the unique charm of rural life on the Shore, and her characters typify the folksy strength and eccentricity of the natives. "In Oysterback, " as the town's Captain Saloman observes, "we have characters we haven't even used yet". Meet Ferrus T. Buckett, the world's oldest waterman, and Helga Wallop, editor of the "Oysterback Bugeye" ("She's the town gossip anyway; she might as well get paid for it!"). Help the locals poke fun at Johnny Ray Insley, still smarting over the outcome of this year's Muskrat Skinning Contest. Scoff at J. Snidely Grubb's plans for the Widgeon-on-Oysterback Condominiums. And laugh about the "Midnight Waterman Escort Service," a pretty good idea (in these hard times) hatched one Girls' Night at the Blue Crab. Written with affection and good humour, "The Oysterback Tales" are a celebration of Maryland's Eastern Shore and the folk who live there. Like Chappell's whimsical drawings of Oysterback in all its metropolitan glory, her stories will cheer and charm.