Coming soon (11 December 2009)

The Lovely Bones

On December 6, 1973 in Norristown, Pennsylvanis, a suburb of Philadephia, Susie Salmon takes a shortcut home from her school. She is approached by a neighbor, George Harvey, a man in his mid-30s who lives alone and builds dollhouses for a living. He persuades her to enter an underground den he has recently built nearby. Once she enters, he rapes her, slits her throat, then dismembers her body. An elbow, the only part of Susie ever to be found, falls out of his bag as he returns home, disposing of the remaining parts of the body by putting them in a safe and dropping it into a sinkhole. Meanwhile, Susie's spirit flees toward her personal heaven.

The Salmon family is at first reluctant to accept that Susie has been killed, but then accepts this when Susie's hat and elbow are found. The police who talk to Harvey find him odd but see no reason to suspect him. Jack, Susie's father, becomes suspicious and later begins to harass the police about Harvey.

Lindsey and her boyfriend Samuel Heckler become engaged, find an old house in the woods owned by a classmate's father, and decide to fix it up and live there. Sometime after the celebration, while arguing with his son, Jack suffers from a heart Attack.

She moves on into the larger heaven, still watching earthbound events from time to time. She sees her sister's newborn baby girl, who is named Abigail Suzanne. One day she spies Harvey getting off a Greyhound bus at a diner in New Hamshire in early spring.Susie notices some large icicles hanging from the roof, and after the woman leaves, one falls and hits Harvey on the head, knocking him into a nearby ravine and ultimately killing him.

The novel ends with Susie showing us Lindsey's newborn daughter, then tracking away to a newer house where a man has finally found Susie's old charm bracelet. "This little girl's grown up by now," his wife says. "Almost. Not quite," Susie's narrative voice rejoins. "I wish you all a long and happy life."