Bone Pendant Girls, The Andi Wyndham Series by Terry S. Friedman 
An Excerpt + Book & Author Info + Guest Post + A Giveaway!
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Bone Pendant Girls
THE ANDI WYNDHAM SERIES
Beware the Fisherman.
Andi Wyndham has communicated with spirits since she was a kid. When a bone pendant carved into the likeness of a girl’s face calls to her at a gem show in Pennsylvania, she can’t resist buying it and a sister piece. When she discovers the girls are missing runaways and the pendants are made of human bone, Andi is drawn into a mystery that will force her to confront her gifts, her guilt, and the ghosts haunting her.
Pendant Girls Mariah and Bennie urge Andi to find a man they call “Fisherman,” a master of disguise. Teaming up with a handsome private eye and a South Carolina sheriff, Andi must find the girls’ bodies and put their souls to rest, before the Fisherman casts his deadly net to trap Andi.
Praise for Bone Pendant Girls:
“Beautifully written, Friedman’s lyrical style will lure you in and scare you senseless.”
~ Annette Dashofy, USA Bestselling author of the Zoe Chambers Mysteries
“Friedman’s fast-paced thriller is both heart-pounding and heart-wrenching.”
~ Starred review Library Journal, March 1, 2024
“Full of paranormal twists, Bone Pendant Girls is a supernatural thriller about trust and acceptance.”
~ Foreword Reviews
“This supernatural thriller provides an enjoyable wrinkle in narration. The audiobook doesn’t feature a single narrator voicing all characters or a full cast with an individual narrator voicing each character. . . . Together, the three narrators provide enlightening perspectives on the hunt at the heart of this chilling production.”
~ D.E.M. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2024]
Book Details:
Genre: Paranormal Thriller, Suspense, Mystery, Southern
Published by: CamCat Books
Publication Date: February 25, 2025
Number of Pages: 496
ISBN: 9780744307931 (ISBN10: 0744307937)
Series: Andi Wyndham, Book 1To purchase your copy of Bone Pendant Girls, click any of the following links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads | CamCat Books | Goodreads | Audible
Read an excerpt of Bone Pendant Girls:
Ginkgo leaves drifted down like butterfly wings outside the gem show. They made a yellow carpet on the walkway to the boarding school’s gymnasium. Within the swirling leaves, Andi heard a voice. Hollow metallic vowels rustled like leaves in gutters. Consonants scratched and thumped like animals trapped in heating ducts. When the frantic skittering of syllables merged into words, a ghostly plea slipped into her consciousness. Trapped . . . help.
“You’ll find your way to the Other Side,” Andi whispered.
Some days, the spirits refused to leave her in peace. Turning off spirits’ voices was like trying to keep a snake in a bird cage. The Shadows had been with her since she was four. Her mother had sent those spirits to watch over her. But the voice she heard today was not the Shadows. They rarely spoke.
Please . . . help.
Andi opened the door. “I’m not the one to help you,” she told the young voice. “I attract bad men.”
The ticket ladies took her money and stamped her hand. She scanned from one end of the gymnasium to the other. So many vendors. Where to start. Left past the fossils to a station called P&S Lapidary. They always had unique pieces.
Please . . . ma’am. The whisper had a faint Southern lilt.
“Aw come on. Hijack someone else’s head. Go see my ex-husband. Convince him to give me all his money.” Andi looked left and right to make sure no one had heard. No need to worry. Odds were good that at least one other person in the crowd talked to herself.
Andi made her way through thirty stations. Through bargain-bound women rummaging in bins of clearance beads, through vendors taking orders to set stones, through miles of bead strands, she searched for the perfect happy, shiny piece. Twice around the gym, and that whispering voice drilled its way into her conscience again.
Please . . . buy . . . me.
Cripes! The urgency of that sweet young voice. She heaved a sigh. “Hope you’re not expensive. Where are you?” Her feet ached and the place was stifling hot. “Where?”
Over here!
She couldn’t see a damn thing through the shoppers lined up two people deep at the stations. Up on her toes, down, from foot to foot, sideways. A tiring, annoying dance. Andi shivered despite the stuffy gymnasium.
Here!
Easing her way through the shoppers, she peered into a glass display case. Malachite beads, a red coral branch necklace, two strands of ringed freshwater pearls, and one pendant with a cameo-style face etched in bone.
The vendor with a bolo tie looked like her ninth grade geography teacher. “Let me open that for you. The face pendants are going fast. Only two left.” He lifted the hinged glass cover.
Me! A loud whisper from the carved pendant with a girl’s face.
Andi looked intently at it. Like most cameos, the face was a side profile. Tendrils of the girl’s curly hair escaped an upswept hairdo, framing her face. At first, she appeared to be asleep. Then the girl’s face turned and studied her too, eyes blinking as if she’d just awakened. Andi shivered. In the spirit world she’d inherited from her mother, voices whispered. Images in jewelry didn’t move.
What now? She spoke silently. Subconscious to subconscious.
Hurry, ma’am! Buy . . .
A woman who reeked of Chanel No. 5 snatched the face pendant from the case.
“Excuse me,” Andi said. “I came here to buy that piece. It called to me.” There now, she’d admitted she was crazy. She gave a lopsided grin and a shrug. “Please could I have it?”
“Sorry, hon. I got here first.” A condescending glance at Andi, and the lady wrapped her bratwurst fingers around the pendant.
“Not to worry, ladies,” the seller told them. “I have another like this.” He pushed the tablecloth aside, reached under the table, and pulled out a second pendant. “It’s stunning with Namibian Pietersite accents. I could let you have it for the same price.”
No . . . me. An adamant voice.
“I don’t want the other pendant,” Andi said. “I came here for the one in her hand.” At the next booth, a woman holding a jade jar stopped talking and stared at her. Andi blushed, knowing she sounded like a petulant child.
Suddenly, Chanel Lady gasped. “Ouch! Awful thing cut me. It has sharp edges.” A thin line of blood welled on her finger, and she dropped the pendant as if it had bitten her.
Andi caught it before it hit the floor. The silver bezel felt ice-cold. A young girl’s eyes gazed up at her and blinked. Thanks, ma’am.
She stared at the pendant. Her mother had warned about spirits attaching to people. If spirits attached, she’d said, terrible things could happen.
Chanel Lady cradled the darker pendant. Not a word was uttered from it. Maybe the tea-stained piece believed in being seen and not heard. Its bone face was younger. Pietersite in the top bezel had chatoyancy, a luminous quality. Thin wavy splotches of browns, blacks, reds, and yellows swirled through the dark stone like tiny ice crystals in frozen latte.
“Yes. I like this one better. Excellent quality Pietersite,” Chanel Lady said.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll take her payment first.” The seller probably wanted to send the woman to another station before she started a fight with his customers.
“No problem. Is this ivory?” Andi asked. Whether vendors called it mammoth bone or not, elephants didn’t deserve to be slaughtered for jewelry.
“Absolutely not. Wouldn’t sell it if it was. Cow bone,” he assured her.
A triumphant smirk aimed at Andi, and Chanel Lady made her way through the crowd. Subduing an impulse to give her the middle finger, Andi turned back to the pendant. She studied the heart-shaped face, turned it over and winced at the tiny price sticker. Was she insane? Andi couldn’t afford that; she’d lost her teaching job.
“I’ll need your address and email.” The seller handed her a clipboard.
She’d fought over it and won, no changing her mind now. While he charged her credit card, Andi filled out the information for his mailing list. Then she weaved through the shoppers to find a quiet corner by the concessions stand.
What the hell. The pendant was a dose of credit card therapy. Unzipping the plastic sleeve, she lifted the piece by the bail. Two bezels set in silver. One disk held labradorite, a luminous blue stone with black veins, and in the second bezel, a face carved in bone. She shifted it in her palm, studying the details. Had light played with the image, making it look like the girl moved? It would warm at the touch of her skin.
Once more around the gym, and she left the show, slogging through the field toward her car, wondering how a whispering girl had convinced her to buy a pricey pendant. Yet, she had a sense that something other than her credit card bill had changed.
***
Excerpt from Bone Pendant Girls by Terry S. Friedman. Copyright 2024 by Terry S. Friedman. Reproduced with permission from Terry S. Friedman. All rights reserved.
Guest Post from Terry S. Friedman
The What If factor
I am a jewelry-aholic and a rock hound. If opaque stones speak to me, I buy them. All people purchase jewelry because it speaks to them, right? A moon face pendant called to me and later a carved bone pendant with a beautiful girl’s face. They became focal points of necklaces I made. Then I thought, what if the pendants are not really cow bone. What if they’re made of human bone? When I wore the pendants, I floated that idea and the universal reaction was “Eewww.”
Bingo, a novel idea for a plot was born. What if your jewelry talks to you? What if a unique piece you found at a gem show has a mystery you must solve?
How did a cold case become the basis for your novel?
Too many connections. A student disappears for many months, a pretty blond, high school-age girl. I had taught that missing girl. Her suspected killer lived next door to her, but police had no physical evidence. He’d attended my school. Her family hired a retired FBI agent to find their daughter. I knew him too. Police searched everywhere. They even brought cadaver dogs to a pond in my neighborhood. In the end, police found her not far from the school where I taught. I cried when I wrote about Mariah’s discovery in my novel. I still cry when I read that scene. The resolution was something any mother would have nightmares about forever.
How did you put flesh on the bones of your novel?
Bone Pendant Girls was my MFA capstone. My favorite chapter is the first Mariah chapter which was an assignment to incorporate music in a scene. Bennie, the second pendant girl, entered the book as Mariah’s streetwise friend, and she’ll have some cameo appearances in the sequel. She can’t cross over because she insists on interfering in justice and helping mortals. Ghosts can’t interfere in the justice of mortals in my novels. The villain was another MFA piece for a nonfiction class. He’s based him on my childhood next door neighbor. When I turned that piece in, the prof said, “This can’t be a real person.” I assured him that Mr. O. had existed. He was the man who convinced my mother we had to move. Mr. O. was always nice to me, but Mom didn’t trust a man who kept a pet mouse in a milk carton and had a yard the health department routinely inspected and condemned. Other characters came easily to me when I was between awake and sleep. While I’m talking about characters, I’ll confess that I fall madly in love with the lovers in my novels. If Eli were real, I’d marry the guy.
Did any life experience inspire a scene in this book?
When I was a student at University of South Carolina, my dorm was off campus. It was an antebellum hotel on a corner across the street from the State Capitol Park, the state Supreme Court, and a small church graveyard. One night during my sophomore year, I walked those five blocks alone knowing there had been recent assaults on coeds. After the first two blocks, I heard footsteps behind me, so I slowed to let the person pass. He slowed too. I sped up. He sped up. My stomach had boulders growing in it as my mind spun into survivor mode. Predators get off on people’s fear, I decided. If you take away the victim’s fear, the crime is no longer fun. Probably only writers’ minds work this way. Two blocks from my dorm, I stopped at a corner and turned around. “Oh my gosh, it’s you! Thank God it’s you!” I said, although I had no idea who the man was. I explained how my boyfriend (later ex-husband) refused to drive me home, and the stranger said I should’ve carried a baseball bat with me. He walked me to my dorm, I thanked him, and to this day I’m not sure if he was the mugger. The scene with Mariah and Fisherman came from this incident.
How do you explain the unexplainable?
Nobody knows what happens after you die. My theory is that people linger to make sure
their loved ones are healing or maybe just to eavesdrop a little like in Tom Sawyer. If all goes well, they can cross to the Other Side and meet with loved ones. Before writing Bone Pendant Girls, I spoke with a medium who was conducting spirit releases in her home. I wanted the novel’s framework to be realistic in the spirit world. She said people can cross over and cross back or just stay in this world until they’re ready to move on. That made sense to me. Many people don’t believe in ghosts. That’s okay because my novels are not just ghost stories. They always have a theme. In Bone Pendant Girls, it’s acceptance and forgiveness and mother/daughter relationships. The sequel’s message is that broken families can repair themselves like starfish. Eleven Seconds especially honors veterans and their families.
For people afraid of things that go bump in the night or people scared because of the book cover, my ghosts are not demons or vampires. They’re just dead people lost between the worlds. The Shadows are a different kind of ghost. Andi’s mom sent them to console her when she was a child, and they always show when trouble has found Andi. The Shadows with their beady yellow eyes are ghosts of children killed in wars.
What is Terry Friedman’s connection to Bone Pendant Girls?
First novels are like first babies. There’s pain in the birth process. Then you nurture them. You laugh. You cry. You pray that someone important will love it and offer you a contract. It took a long time to find that special publisher. Because of the cold case connection and because it’s my firstborn, this novel will always have a special place in my heart.
Bone Pendant Girls Author Terry S. Friedman
Terry Friedman is a writer and a rockhound. Her novel, BONE PENDANT GIRLS, a paranormal thriller, was published by CamCat January 30, 2024.
Terry began her writing career freelancing for a small newspaper outside Philadelphia. While raising her daughters Jessica and Chelie in West Chester, PA, she taught English for decades and traveled abroad with students. Terry earned an M.F.A. from Wilkes University and also graduated from the FBI Citizens Academy. Thirteen of her fiction and non-fiction pieces have been published, and she co-edited Delaware Valley Mystery Writers’ short stories anthology. DEATH KNELL V.
She is an award-winning author. In 2022 the Southeastern Writers Association awarded her first place in their writing contest for her humor piece, second place for BONE PENDANT GIRLS in a fiction category, and an honorable mention for THE BANSHEE’S WAIL, an unpublished Irish novel. She is a Killer Nashville Claymore Finalist in the Supernatural category.
A Pennwriters Board member and a member of Sisters in Crime, she currently writes thrillers from coastal South Carolina. Terry has traveled the world from Fiji to Delphi and brings to her writing a solid respect for things that go bump in the night.
To learn more about Terry, click any of the following links: www.TerryFriedmanAuthor.com, Amazon Author Profile, Goodreads – @tfried44, BookBub – @tfried44, Instagram – @wineandreeses, Threads – @wineandreeses, X – @tfried44, BlueSky – @tfried44 & Facebook – @TerrySFriedmanAuthor
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Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell
I love stones, rocks, crystals too.
I just started reading the book so I just met Eli. And yes, I love him already! Also love the name Eli!
Great guest post. Can’t wait till I get further in the book!