Paper Ghosts by Allen, Sarah Addison

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.

Author: Sarah Addison Allen
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 09/01/2026
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.51h x 6.43w x 1.06d
ISBN: 9781250283429

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 06/01/2026 pg. 78
Booklist 06/01/2026

About the Author
SARAH ADDISON ALLEN is the New York Times bestselling author of Other Birds, Garden Spells, The Sugar Queen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon, The Peach Keeper, First Frost and Lost Lake. She was born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina.