A tender coming-of-age novel about a young woman haunted by her sister’s death, who starts to believe that her beloved sibling has returned to her—in the form of a ghost fish, for fans of Sweetbitter and Our Wives Under the Sea. Alison is mired in loneliness and grief. Freshly twenty-three and mourning the loss of her younger sister, who has drowned at sea, she’s moved out of her hometown and into a cramped apartment on New York’s Lower East Side. Now she’s living the cliché, barely making rent as a restaurant hostess and avoiding her roommates, while watching the bright, busy passersby from her bubble of grief. She doesn’t need originality; she just needs to be alive. So why does she feel she isn’t truly living? Until late one night, when she rounds the corner and sees a shape in the air—a ghost. And how strange, it looks like a fish. What is it? Alison knows, without hesitation: it is her beloved sister, finally returned to her side. Safe in a pickle jar filled with water, the ghost fish goes wherever Alison does: in an alcove at the restaurant; in a tote bag on the subway; in her room at night as her roommates chatter outside. She knows she has to keep her safe from the world, the way she didn’t before. She knows that, together, they will never be lonely again. But as Alison’s new life in New York begins to grow, and as she navigates the murky waters of dating, friendship, and desire, she must ask: what if her sister is keeping her away from a life outwardly lived? With tenderness and heart, stretching from New York, New York to Key West, Florida, Ghost Fish is a meditation on grief, loneliness, and the strange, kaleidoscopic ways we help ourselves—and those we love— through it.

Dickinson after her death: the story of the trio of women who brought the first collection of Emily Dickinson’s poems out of the shadows Grieving the loss of her sister and alone in a big house, Lavinia goes through Emily’s things and wonders what to do with her sister’s poems. She enlists the help of Susan, Emily’s best friend and brother Austin’s wife, who rouses herself from a deep depression to put the poems into some order to approach a publisher. Lavinia also brings Austin’s mistress, Mabel, into the project for her worldliness and connections. In the wings, there is Millicent, Mabel’s daughter, a little girl like Emily in spirit, wise and strong-willed, and fascinated by things big and small in the world around her. Delicate like lacework with dark threads running through it, Pale Shadows picks up the story of Emily Dickinson where Paper Houses left off, to explore the place of women in history, their creativity, and the enduring power of Dickinson’s poetry.