A Ghost's Story: A Novel - Hardcover

'This multi-layered book is clever, delicious and full of memorable images. Long jet earrings "hang like dark teardrops" and Katie steals into a woman like a "moth that had accidentally flown into a mouth and rested within, fluttering, delicate, vulnerable, only to be expelled seconds later." There are some wonderfully gothic descriptions of death – such as when a girl is struck down by a copperhead snake – and the book is at its best when Katie is at her nastiest (for instance, when orchestrating the death of a pastiche act). A Ghost's Story is playful, highly readable, and a paean to the mystery and unknowability of the creative imagination.' (The Independent)

'A fascinating story of what it might be like to be a ghost, and the longing in us that makes us want them to exist' ("Books of the Year," Glasgow Herald, chosen by Lesley McDowell)

'Lorna Gibb's compelling story of spiritualism and mediums is full of the most intriguing, bizarre detail as she reveals the insider secrets of séances from the uses of lengths of muslin to a dollop of phosphorescence...Gibb's novel is multi-layered...add in a supporting cast of rogues, charlatans and true believers and the theatrical trappings of séances and you are pitched in a world that is rich and strange.' (4 star review, Sunday Express)

'Crossing time and continents, melding found material, real and fictitious characters and events, this is an intriguing, well-researched debut about truth and illusion, reality and the world of the spirit.' (Debut fiction review, Daily Mail)

'Astonishingly adept... mysterious, wry, sophisticated but also brutally honest' (FEAR Magazine)

'Genuinely moving' (Financial Times)

'Ideal fireside reading' (Lady)

'The author has a meticulous eye for historical detail and writes evocatively' (Irish Times)

'At turns spooky and comical, Gibb deftly weaves fact with fiction so that each page shimmers ectoplasmically with uncertainty.' (Irish Mail)