Paper Ghosts

By Sarah Addison Allen

Part ghost story, part love story and steeped in magical realism, Paper Ghosts will transport you to a place where old secrets echo through the years and love finds a way of bringing us home.

Every family has its secrets . . .The Wester women live inside theirs.

For decades, the women of Wester House have unsettled and fascinated their small, timeless North Carolina town. Their home is full of whispers, old griefs, and uncanny knowing. But when Willamena Wester reaches out to the granddaughter she once pushed away, long-buried truths begin to stir.

1976: Restless young Willamena falls for a stranded musician who brings freedom and the promise of another life to her carefully controlled world. Their brief, incandescent love story promises to escape the pull of the Wester legacy until Willamena makes a fateful choice that changes her life forever.

Present day: Returning home is the last thing Bailey Wester wants. Yet as she reconnects with Willamena, the grandmother she feared, Bailey begins to understand the love, heartbreak, and impossible choices that shaped the women in her family and realizes the past may not have been trying to haunt them after all. A luminous novel filled with Sarah Addison Allen's stunning prose and signature blend of romance, Southern charm, and wonder, Paper Ghosts reminds us that in order to have the future we really want, sometimes we need to live with the past, and not let go of it.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1250283426
• ISBN13: 9781250283429
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Another joyous glimpse into the world of Sarah Addison Allen! I cannot express how much I look forwa

She paints a world of people filled with joy and sorrow, love lost, love found. Add a dash of magic and you are in for a joyous ride! Sarah Addison Allen never disappoints! A true southern story teller who keeps you enthralled and engaged. From the first page to the last I will never forget the thrill I get when starting to read for the first time, or reread again one of her books. One of the true pleasures in life is reading (for myself)and I thank her for the happiness I experience when settling down for an evening read. Thank you Sarah!

A page-turning story of love, heartbreak and impossible choices

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for a digital advance reader copy. All comments and opinions are my own unless otherwise noted. One of my favorite authors has once again written a page-turning story of love, heartbreak, and impossible choices. This is a captivating tale of a family of women with a reputation of being witches. This small southern town in North Carolina has always been full of gossip, and the lore of the past only makes that of the present more vivid. Part ghost story, part fairy tale, part romance, the novel carefully drew me in with its atmospheric storytelling laced with magical realism. The author says the novel is “set inside a haunted mansion across two timelines and is about a family curse and the courage to heal from generational unhappiness.” The characters are memorable, the emotions passionate, even the weather brings a sense of drama to this unputdownable novel of family secrets. This is a book I’ll be telling everyone to read.