“Ink and Bone”

By Lisa Unger

Touchstone (352 pages, $24.99)

The Hollows, an idyllic sounding town in upstate New York, keeps calling to author Lisa Unger. This fictional town that attracts those seeing a respite from New York City or want a smaller community to call home also has a dark side that rears its head and takes residents on emotional roller-coasters that test their mettle and moral compass.

Each of Unger’s novels set in The Hollows follows a different set of characters with the town as the only constant. “Ink and Bone,” the fourth novel in this series, veers deeper into the supernatural than Unger’s previous outings to The Hollows.

But Unger makes the spectral realistic because anything can happen in The Hollows, and does. In Unger’s storytelling, the supernatural jumpstarts a story about fragile families seeking peace and fulfillment.

Psychic college student Finley Montgomery has moved to The Hollows to understand her powers, and to control them, while living with psychic grandmother, Eloise Montgomery, whose powers have helped solved many a case.

Finley has been receiving distressing visions of a young girl who is being held captive. These images may involve the real abduction of Merri Gleason’s daughter, Abbey, 10 months ago. Having exhausted all other options, Merri has hired local private investigator Jones Cooper to try to find her daughter. Finley is urged by Eloise to help Jones. While Jones and Finley pursue leads, a young girl called Penny lives in a dark, dank room on a farm on the outskirts of town. (TNS)