We're All Dead Here

By Jake C. Rudquist

"An inventive ghost story with authentic depth-not overly graphic, but genuinely nightmarish."-KIRKUS REVIEWS

2026 FEATURED BOOK - VIVANT MAGAZINE

2025 BEST BOOKS OF THE SUMMER - RESIDENT MAGAZINE

2025 FEATURED BOOK - ANOKA COUNTY LIBRARY SYSTEM

Being dead takes a lot more spirit than you'd think.

What would you do if you were a ghost? Twelve-year-old Samuel just wants to go home to his living parents. But his new friend and fellow specter, Maria, reveals all sorts of perks found in the afterlife. They'll never get sick again. They never have to grow up and do boring grownup things. And even better, they can track down the spirits of long-gone people they'd like to meet, such as a great-great-uncle who died a hero in the Second World War.

Now, if only Samuel can escape this abandoned hospital, ditch those pesky paranormal investigators, and evade his wicked spirit guide, Gloria, things would really be livening up.

Or should that be deadening up?

Kirkus Reviews verdict - GET IT

Full Kirkus review - In Rudquist's debut middle school thriller, a boy held captive in a forbidding afterlife rebels against the reality of death.

After yet another hospital visit, a sickly boy named Samuel, age 12, is killed when his parents' car is hit by a truck. He suddenly finds himself standing outside the car, confronted by the truck driver's grotesque grin and black-eyed stare. Fleeing the driver, Samuel encounters Gloria, a ghostly little girl, who tells him his "time among the living has ended" and whisks him away to where she says he will spend eternity: the hospital of his sickly childhood. The building is decaying and condemned; hauntingly, the abandoned room Gloria puts him in is the same one he occupied years before. For confused, distressed Samuel, time becomes meaningless until he receives a visit from 12-year-old Maria, another hospital inmate. She tells him what he doesn't want to hear: "You're dead, and I'm dead. We're all dead here." On the bright side, she says, ghosts don't get sick-and they can walk through walls and "kind of" fly. The downside: Gloria won't let them leave. Maria's attempt to escape provides the catalyst for what happens next, including a satisfying riff on popular ghost hunter-type TV shows, Samuel's exploration of his burgeoning powers, and his meeting with the ghostly distant relative he's always idolized-Henry, a World War II hero. In Rudquist's gripping yarn, Samuel plunges into an unsettling afterlife where horror awaits beneath a facade of bleak mundanity. Evenly balanced between present-day action and flashbacks, the narrative provides dimension, revealing the pain beneath Maria's strength of purpose, the reasons for Samuel's single-minded blindness to friendship and good advice, and Henry's vulnerability. Some readers might be tempted to skim the lengthy scenes set in the 1940s North African desert, where Henry is a lowly private in an anti-tank unit, but the details are colorful and well observed, lending weight to his meeting with Samuel. The final, twisty showdown with Gloria may be a familiar horror story trope, but it's a real chiller, leading to an unexpected yet fittingly bittersweet conclusion.

An inventive ghost story with authentic depth-not overly graphic, but genuinely nightmarish.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0CNDFK9KX
• ISBN13: 9798863442853
• Release Date: November 2023
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 8.0"