McGinnis extends compassion to the asylum's most helpless patients as well as the most disturbed and violent characters.' - Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 'Several storylines are threaded together in this powerful and dark book, examining the line between sanity and insanity and often indicting those who get to define that line. Fans of period pieces and crime dramas will be pleased with this haunting tale.' - School Library Journal 'Grace's personal struggles to find her own place and influence her own story mirror the historical struggles of women throughout history. Readers will wish they could watch her and Thornhollow solve murders for pages and pages more.' - Kirkus Reviews Every person she encounters, mad or trapped by the label of madness, feels achingly real. McGinnis can surely tell a story.' - USA Today While others are writing about relatively ‘normal' heroes and heroines, McGinnis takes the less-traveled route to bring us a heroine damaged physically and mentally, and to the far reaches of her soul. 'A bountiful buffet of twisted, dark intrigue. This book is highly recommended.' - School Library Journal Grace herself is flawed, complicated, and struggling with intense pain that leads her to some very dark and murky moral places where she asks people to do what may be the wrong thing but for the right reasons. 'McGinnis excels at rich character development. But gruesome nights bring Grace and the doctor into the circle of a killer who will bring her shaky sanity and the demons in her past dangerously close to the surface.

Now comfortable in an ethical asylum, Grace finds friends - and hope. Continuing to operate under the cloak of madness at crime scenes allows her to gather clues from bystanders who believe her less than human.

When a visiting doctor interested in criminal psychology recognizes Grace's brilliant mind beneath her rage, he recruits her as his assistant. Grace Mae is already familiar with madness when family secrets and the bulge in her belly send her to an insane asylum - but it is in the darkness that she finds a new lease on life. Mindy McGinnis, the acclaimed author of Not a Drop to Drink and In a Handful of Dust, combines murder, madness, and mystery in a beautifully twisted gothic historical thriller perfect for fans of novels such as Asylum and The Diviners as well as television's True Detective and American Horror Story.

A Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis