Product Description

As Tara Stewart drives through the dark, winter night, from Charlotte to Ottawa, she¿s haunted by ghosts from her past. Summoned to her abusive father¿s funeral, she hasn¿t been home, or spoken to her family, in years. The last place she wants to be is in the company of her vindictive twin sister, Evelyn, and her brother-in-law, Peter. The hail begins to fall. Thanks to treacherous road conditions, she barely makes it to her destination. Upon arriving, she falls on the icy driveway, slamming her knee into concrete and compact snow. Evelyn and Peter pull her inside, just as she is losing consciousness. Outside, the hailstorm still rages. Reports on the news suggest it¿s a worldwide phenomenon. Globally, resulting damage and death is reaching catastrophic levels. Now a prisoner in her father¿s old mansion, stuck with her estranged twin and brother-in-law, Tara must try to survive the worst storm in modern history. She soon discovers the storm is not her only enemy. Her family¿and the house itself¿seem intent on her destruction. Can she survive the undying hailstorm, and whispered threats from her ghosts, who swear the end is near?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1641076 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 244 pages

About the Author
Joel A. Sutherland is a librarian who lives east of Toronto, Ontario. Frozen Blood is his first novel. Visit Sutherland online at www.joelasutherland.com

Customer Reviews

A new type of Apocalypse
Tara, a recovering alcoholic, drives to Canada to help get things in order after her father's death. When she gets to her father's home, in a very well-to-do neighborhood, she must deal with the hatred and animosity of her twin sister and the guilt surrounding the death of her niece. If the funeral arrangements and her sister's hatred were the only things Tara had to face things would be just peachy, but she is also haunted by the image of her dead father, who instructs her and pushes her to do things that she really doesn't care to do. On top of the other catastrophes that are happening in Tara's life at this time, an ice storm traps everyone in the house. It's an ice storm to end all ice storms, and as the end approaches, Tara must face her demons or die trying.

Frozen Blood is a well-written story that keeps building and building up until the climactic end. There are no heroes in this book, and really no villains; just a few people trying to get through an unbearable moment in their lives. The horror of this tale also presents itself on many different levels. There is tension between all of the characters throughout the entire story, horrifying ghosts, ghastly deaths, and apocalypses unlike any others I've ever read about. At the halfway point, the story really begins to build momentum and becomes hard to put down. This story is certainly a keeper and I would recommend it to any library, both public and private.

Reviewed by Bret Jordan at MonsterLibrarian(dot)com

A great first novel
Tara Stewart is returning home after an absence of many years to attend her father's funeral. But as she returns home she's forced to confront the ghosts of her past, and the ghosts in her head. She is battling with alcoholism and guilt and schizophrenia, and as if that wasn't enough to deal with, it's starting to hail. And as Tara gets closer to her destination, the storm is getting worse.

Written with loving echoes of Stephen King's The Shining and Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Sutherland's first novel is a wonderful gothic chiller. Sutherland's most impressive achievement in this book is his characterization. Tara Stewart is the kind of character that sticks with you.

A good first novel.
Joel A. Sutherland has put together a great first novel. While many writers fill their prose with large amount of descriptive text about everything and anything, Joel tends to shy away from that approach instead focusing on the dialogue, actions and thoughts of the characters involved. This results in the creation of a piece of literature that is not only a much quicker and easy read but one that really allows you to get into the heads and mindset of the main characters. The reader is almost overcome with a sense of cabin fever themselves while reading this book.

Frozen Blood has touches of Stephen King's The Shining but is very much a different read. While The Shining truly centers around a family in a haunted location, Frozen Blood never reveals if the house is haunted, whether Tara Stewart (the main character) is a ghost magnet or whether she's just plain crazy. Though this sounds cliche on the surface, Mr. Sutherland manages to keep it fresh and interesting throughout.

Joel Sutherland doesn't create the perfect novel with his first outing but it was good enough to be nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. And while not perfect, Frozen Blood does have me looking forward to the next genre novel to come from this author. Highly recommended for anyone looking for a quick, easy reading genre novel... especially one that takes place in Canada.