Four years after his wife Marie's death, art professor Michael Courcy has forged a special relationship with a charismatic young woman, and his career is on the right track. Things should be looking up. But instead, Michael finds himself trapped in an emotional deadlock, still aching from the loss of Marie, yet yearning to move forward with his new love. Michael enlists the help of an eccentric psychiatrist, but just as he thinks the therapy is working, he sees a photo of a portrait inside his ancestral home in England. Shockingly, the centuries-old portrait looks exactly like the chair of the art department, the woman with whom Michael had argued that very morning. Unexplainable and frightening events begin to occur, and Michael worries that truly dark spirits have invaded his Northern California home. While there is no clear connection between the hauntings and the portrait, Michael knows he must make sense of the past-and the portrait-before he can come to terms with the present and envision a future. He travels to England, knowing that only on the Staffordshire moors will he find what he needs to defeat the mysterious evil gathering around him. "The Portrait" is a sinister tale of a rational man who must ultimately decide how much he is prepared to risk, in order to avoid losing everything he loves. | The Portrait by Joseph Barron, Paperback | Indigo Chapters