When her marriage broke down Katy Logan thought she would have to bring up her daughter, Jett, alone. When she saw Gordon Smith lecturing on Appalachian Religion she found him fascinating and soon their relationship developed. After marrying Gordon, Katy and her daughter moved into his farm in Solom and started their new lives as a family.

Katy was determined to make her second marriage a success and gave up her career to become a full-time housewife (definitely not one of her strong points) but as time passed she began to suspect that there was something strange going on. Things in the farm house would fall off shelves and she kept smelling the scent of lilac.

At the same time Jett also starts to suspect something. Gordon had often told weird stories of a blood drinking scarecrow. To start with she just thought he recounting about some ancient folktale but while feeding the goats in the barn she sees something that makes her think there are more to these stories than just words.

Will Katy and Jett discover the truth about Gordon before something dreadful happens?

The Farm is the latest book from author Scott Nicholson and is set in the Blue Ridge Mountain town of Solom. It follows the lives of Katy and Jett Logan as they try to establish a new life after Katy's marriage to Gordon Smith. Smith had been married previously but his first wife had apparently been killed in a car accident.

As with Scott's earlier works, this story has a wonderfully creepy feeling. You know that there is something going on but the author doesn't let you know what. It is this ability to create atmosphere that makes Nicholson's writing so compelling. I have ready many horror novels but not many manage to put a shiver up my spine!

I have often said that one of the pleasures of reviewing new books for this website is the opportunity to discover new authors. Scott Nicholson was one such author. From the first book I read it was clear that he was a very skilled author with a great imagination and this has continued through the subsequent novels.

If you enjoy atmospheric, eerie stories then I highly recommend the works of Scott Nicholson. The storylines are original and will definitely keep you enthralled to the very end.

Go on, give him a try! You won't regret it.

Synopsis
Katy Logan wasn't quite sure why she left her finance career in the big city to marry religion professor Gordon Smith and move to the tiny Appalachian community of Solom.

Maybe she just wanted to get her 12-year-old daughter Jett away from the drugs and bad influences. Maybe she wanted to escape from the memories of her first husband. Or perhaps she was enchanted by the promise of an idyllic life on the farm that has been in Gordon's family for 150 years.

But the move has been anything but stress-free, because the man she married seems more interested in the region's rural Baptist sects than in his new wife. The Smith family secrets run deep: Gordon teases Katy and Jett with a story about a wicked scarecrow that comes in from the fields at night to slake an unnatural thirst. Gordon's great-grandfather was a horseback preacher who mysteriously disappeared while on a mission one wintry night, and some say a rival preacher did him in.

Gordon's first wife Rebecca died under equally mysterious circumstances, and Katy's starting to believe Rebecca's spirit is still in the house. The scent of lilacs drifts across the kitchen, doors slam shut with no one else home, and the kitchen curtains flutter even when the windows are closed. Katy becomes obsessed with Rebecca's recipes and clothes, and she finds herself driven to find out more about Rebecca to emulate her and therefore please Gordon. To make matters worse, Gordon's herd of goats watches Katy every time she leaves the house, fixing their rectangular pupils on her as if waiting for some silent command.

Jett is worried about Mom, but she has worries of her own. A Goth girl in a rural elementary school, she gets teased for being different. She misses her dad, and feels guilty because her drug abuse forced Mom to enter a hasty marriage with Gordon. The pressure leads her back to drugs despite her promise to Mom. Now she fears the drugs are blowing her mind. She's starting to hallucinate, and the goats, scarecrows, and a strange man in a black hat are all part of her madness.

But the residents of Solom know all about the man in the black hat. They whisper the legends around the pot-bellied stove at the general store, they pray for protection from him in their little white churches, they think about him as they gather hay, harvest corn, and work their gardens. The brave ones talk about him, believing him dead and buried, but nobody dares to utter his name.

The Reverend Harmon Smith has come back more than century after his last missionary trip, and he has unfinished business. But first Katy and Jett must be brought into the family, and the farm must be prepared to welcome him home. Gordon has been denying his heritage, but now it's time to choose sides. Does he protect the ones he loves, or surrender to the ancestral urge for revenge?