The Diviners

Starred review from January 28, 2013
After committing a small indiscretion, Evie O’Neill couldn’t be happier when her parents exile her from small-town Ohio to live with her uncle in 1920s New York City. A life of fashion, speakeasies, dancing, and music is exactly what 17-year-old Evie wants. But when her Uncle Will, who manages a museum of occult history and artifacts, is drawn into a police investigation of a bizarre and gruesome series of murders, Evie finds herself involved as well—and this means she may be forced to reveal her supernatural powers. Narrator January LaVoy provides lively, magnetic narration and gives unique voices to the book’s cast of fascinating characters. Listeners both young and old will enjoy this supernatural story and find this audio edition enthralling, irresistible entertainment. Ages 15–up. A Little Brown hardcover.

July 30, 2012
Evie O’Neill has a neat-o party trick: she can uncover details about people by holding any object that belongs to them. After one too many tumblers of gin, she uses this skill to out the sexual misadventures of a prominent bachelor in her Ohio hometown, earning her immediate exile to Jazz Age New York City, where her professorial uncle runs a museum devoted to the occult. Naturally, Evie considers this punishment the luckiest break possible, until she realizes she’s arrived just as a demon spirit has been inadvertently released. A spree of grisly murders ensues, eventually necessitating the use of Evie’s special skill. Evie is fighting personal demons, as well, including the ghost of her dead older brother and a penchant for alcohol that gets her into continual trouble. Bray empties a wealth of topics into her complicated narrative—labor reform, a steampunkish robotics experiment, flapper culture, religious zealotry—but her trademark humor is less apparent. The large cast—a pickpocket with a missing mother, a Ziegfeld girl with Hollywood dreams, a Harlem numbers runner who longs to be a poet—ensures there’s plenty to write about in the sequels. Ages 15–up. (Sept.) ■