Author: E.M. Anderson
Publication Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780778368526
MIRA Hardcover
Buy Links:
HarperCollins: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-keeper-of-lonely-spirits-em-anderson?variant=43103037882402
Amazon: https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=9780778368526&tag=hcg-02-20
Social Links:
Author Website: https://www.elizmanderson.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elizmanderson/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizmanderson/
Tumblr: https://elizmanderson.tumblr.com/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/elizmanderson.com
Author Bio:
E.M. Anderson (she/they) is a queer, neurodivergent
writer and the author of The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher. Her work has
appeared in SJ Whitby’s Awakenings: A Cute Mutants Anthology, Wyldblood Press's
From the Depths: A Fantasy Anthology, and Dark Horses: The Magazine of Weird
Fiction. They have two master’s degrees and a feral passion for trees, birds,
pole fitness, and Uncle Iroh. You can find them on Instagram, BlueSky, and
Tumblr at @elizmanderson.
Book Summary:
For fans of UNDER THE WHISPERING DOOR by T.J. Klune, the sweet comfort of THE VERY SECRET SOCIETY OF IRREGULAR WITCHES is combined with the endearing grump of A MAN CALLED OVE, in this cozy fantasy about an immortal ghost hunter who must forgive himself for his tragic past in order to embrace his found family.
In this mesmerizing, wonderfully moving queer cozy fantasy, an immortal ghost hunter must confront his tragic past in order to embrace his found family.
Find an angry spirit. Send it on its way before it causes trouble. Leave before anyone learns his name.
After over two hundred years, Peter Shaughnessy is ready to die and end this cycle. But thanks to a youthful encounter with one o’ them folk in his native Ireland, he can’t. Instead, he’s cursed to wander eternally far from home, with the ability to see ghosts and talk to plants.
Immortality means Peter has lost everyone he’s ever loved. And so he centers his life on the dead—until his wandering brings him to Harrington, Ohio. As he searches for a vengeful spirit, Peter’s drawn into the townsfolk’s lives, homes and troubles. For the first time in over a century, he wants something other than death.
But the people of Harrington will die someday. And he won’t.
As Harrington buckles under the weight of the
supernatural, the ghost hunt pits Peter’s well-being against that of his new
friends and the man he’s falling for. If he stays, he risks heartbreak. If he
leaves, he risks their lives.
Excerpt:
I
A spirit was lurking in the stairwell of
the historic steps on Savannah’s waterfront.
For months, the
steps had been even more treacherous than usual. Not only tourists but folks
who had lived in Savannah all their lives had slipped going up or down—skinned
knees, scraped hands, laughed nervously and said they must have missed a stair
or misjudged the height. A few accused friends of pushing them, but said
friends vehemently denied it, accusing the accusers of clumsiness in turn.
At last, a
tourist had broken a leg and threatened to sue the city. Never mind the signs
at either end, warning users the steps were historical and therefore not up to
code. The signs probably would have prevented the success of such a lawsuit,
but the city, tired of complaints, hung caution tape across the stairwell, and
closure signs for good measure, and turned their attention to other things.
Unbeknownst to
them, the unassuming old white man standing before the steps in the wee hours
of a mild April morning hoped to solve their problem before the sun rose.
He didn’t look
like a ghost-hunter. He was tall and thin, with blue eyes, a hawkish nose, and
thin lips that rarely smiled. Just now, a messenger bag was slung over his
shoulder. Dressed in flannel, jeans, and work boots, he looked like a
farmer—which he wasn’t but had been in his boyhood some two centuries ago.
Now he was a
groundskeeper. At Colonial Park Cemetery for the present, but not for much
longer if all went well this morning.
He thumbed up
the brim of his flat cap, contemplating the stairwell and the spirit therein.
No corporeal form, but a haze of color and smell and emotion, a rotted greenish
brown that smelled like Georgia’s coastal salt marshes but more. The whole
stairwell was mucky with fear. Windows rattled in the buildings on either side.
The
groundskeeper glanced down the street, saw no one, lifted the caution tape and
stepped under it.
A cloud of fear
enveloped him. Rot oozed on his tongue, a phantom feeling of sludge. When he’d
been young and freshly cursed, the spirits’ swell of emotion had overwhelmed
him. He’d drowned in it, unable to separate the feelings of the dead from his
own. They’d scared him, the feelings. The voices, not that they were precisely
voices. For decades, he’d avoided them when he could, ignored them when he
couldn’t. Even Jack had never known about them.
These days, the
dead comforted him: company he didn’t fear losing and never got to know too
well. The closest to death he ever came. A reason for him to live, if there
were a reason when life had been too long already.
Of course, there
was the curse. But the curse wasn’t a reason to live so much as the thing
keeping him alive.
The windows
rattled harder. The rusting metal handrail in the center of the steps groaned.
The
groundskeeper sucked in his cheeks, hoping he at last had good information.
He’d spotted the spirit right off, soon as he’d visited the east end of River
Street, but he’d had a devilish time finding anything out about it. When his
usual hunt through libraries and newspapers failed him, he’d resorted to riding
around with the tourists on three of Savannah’s many ghost tours. The last had
set him on the right track, after two hours on a cramped trolley beside an Ohio
teen who never once let up complaining.
This ghost tour was nothing, the teen had said. He’d spent loads of time
in the cemetery back home, and it was way scarier. He’d seen
ghosts at home. He’d thought they were going to see one on the tour, too, and
didn’t their guide have any better ghost stories?
The
groundskeeper, of course, had actually seen several spirits on the tour. But in
the absence of anyone under age twelve, he was the only one. As the trolley
bumped over the cobbles, tilting alarmingly on the steep ramp down to River
Street, the tourists saw the still water, the three-story riverboat Georgia
Queen docked alongside the quay, the dark windows of the nineteenth-century
storefronts lining the near side of the street. The groundskeeper saw the dead.
Most ghost
tours—most ghost stories—were largely hogwash, but they often contained nuggets
of truth. In this case, the guide had told the tragic tale of two tween girls
who had disappeared less than a year ago. The police had barely bothered
looking for them; the disappearance had never been solved. Their ghosts had
allegedly been spotted over a dozen times in the last six months, always on the
waterfront: they’d ask strangers for help, only to vanish when people tried to
take a closer look. Hogwash—partly. The spirit in the stairwell was a newer
one, young and scared, so the groundskeeper had investigated any disappearances
reported in Savannah in the past year. In a newspaper article dated nine months
back, he’d found a small paragraph mentioning the disappearance of two tween
girls and instructing anyone with information to go to the police. Less than a
week later, one girl had been found, traumatized but alive, at which point all
information about the incident had dried up. The other girl, the groundskeeper
reckoned, had never been found and was likely dead.
What there were
of the spirit’s memories fit such a story. It remembered neither life nor
death, only the confused terror of its last moments. The clearest glimpse the
groundskeeper had gotten was the frightened face of a girl: the one who’d been
found. This, then, might well be the girl who hadn’t.
He’d returned to
the waterfront this morning to find out. To send her on, if he could, into
whatever awaited in the hereafter, before she did something worse than break a
tourist’s leg.
“Layla Brown,”
he said.
The spirit
twisted toward him. He let out a soft breath. Finally. The right name. A name
alone often wasn’t enough to calm a spirit, but names had power, his mam had
always said. This spirit’s name had been buried nearly as deep as his own:
Peter Shaughnessy, a name no one now living knew and the last connection he
had—aside from an old pocket watch—to his family and the place he’d been born
and raised and cursed.
“Layla Brown,”
he repeated more forcefully.
The spirit
shuddered. The nearest window splintered.
“Sure, there’s
no need for that. Ain’t here to bother you none. Here to help, is all.”
She hung over
him like a storm cloud. His heart stuttered, but he reassured himself that she
couldn’t touch him. His messenger bag was filled with iron, salt, yellow
flowers, various herbs.
She could bust a
window over his head, though. If she was stronger than he thought, she could
whip up a wind that’d send him tumbling down the steps, same as if she’d pushed
him herself.
“Died bad, it
seems,” he said softly. “Never found. That right?” The rot soured, her fear
tinged with regret. She wasn’t strong enough to take form, but a faint whisper
echoed in his ears. Even that much took more power than most ghosts had, but
speech took less than corporeality.
Keisha.
And he knew what
she wanted.
“They found
Keisha,” he said. “Whatever happened to you, she didn’t share in it.”
The spirit
wheeled and shifted. Wind moaned, ruffling his shirt and the caution tape
behind him. Images flashed before his eyes like a slideshow. That same
frightened face he’d seen before: Keisha. A rough hand gripping a thin wrist.
The steps, slick with rain. A sudden burst of pain in her temple, a scream,
sneakers squeaking. Then, nothing.
She was
remembering her death.
The wind howled
in the stairwell. The groundskeeper slipped, gripped the shaking handrail.
Shivered, blinked the images away before they could overwhelm him.
“Layla!” he
shouted. “Layla Brown!”
A window
shattered. The groundskeeper ducked, hoping the building was empty at this
hour. Glass rained on his cap. She’d gripped onto his words about what had
happened to her, same as she’d held tight to her fear the past nine months. If
he didn’t remind her of something else soon, there’d be no calming her.
He dug into his
messenger bag, searching for the beaded bracelet he’d stashed there yesterday
afternoon. He hadn’t wanted to use it, if he didn’t have to, aware of its
importance and concerned so small a thing might be destroyed or lost in the
confrontation.
“Layla Brown,”
he repeated, more forcefully than ever as the wind threatened to swallow his
voice. The caution tape fluttered, ripped itself from its fastenings, and blew
away. “Look here.”
He thrust the
bracelet out.
The wind died.
The windows stopped rattling. The handrail stilled. A thin, butter-yellow
strand of affection threaded through the greenish brown of the spirit’s fear.
A new memory
emerged. Two girls, younger, maybe ten or so, singing loudly and off-key to a
pop song as they braided embroidery floss into friendship bracelets. They
shouted out the chorus and fell giggling to the ground, pelting each other with
lettered beads.
The bracelet in
the groundskeeper’s hand was grubbier now. The embroidery floss was fraying;
the lettering on one of the beads had worn away. But it was still legible.
Best friends
4ever.
Keisha Adeyemi
had tied it to a fence post during the candlelight vigil for Layla Brown held
outside their middle school not two days ago.
“Keisha’s all
right,” the groundskeeper said. “Newspaper didn’t say much but that she’d been
found, but she left that for you.”
The spirit
softened. The rotten fearful smell lessened, the feeling of sludge on his
tongue with it. He breathed deep. Used to it, he was, after dealing with the
dead for so long, but it was a relief nonetheless when they calmed down.
“She’s all
right,” he repeated. “But you been scaring people— hurt some of ’em, too. Aye,
you have.”
She rattled a
window, not as vigorously as before, annoyed with the accusation. She’d never
hurt anyone in her life, she insisted.
“In life, maybe
not. Now you have. Best for you and everyone else if you let go of all that
fear and move on, now you know Keisha’s all right.”
The handrail
groaned, swaying back and forth. The nearest support rattled, then ripped out
of the ground, bending the rail and leaving a crack behind. For a moment, he
thought he was losing her again.
Then the shaking
stopped.
Eyeing the
ghost, the groundskeeper bent to examine the crack. Wedged into the stone was a
friendship bracelet matching the one in his hand. More of the lettering was
worn away; the braiding was frayed and broken. The groundskeeper plucked it
carefully from the stone with a handkerchief, like it was made of diamonds and
pearls instead of embroidery floss and plastic beads. The spirit sighed around
him.
“This one’s
yours, is it?” She confirmed it. He hesitated. “You understand,” he said,
“likely they won’t find who done this to you even if I send it along.”
She agreed,
going gray like the Spanish moss draping Savannah’s many live oaks. Not scared,
now. Just sad and regretful, wishing she weren’t dead.
The
groundskeeper ignored that particular wish. His own wants, to the extent he
allowed himself any, tended the opposite way. He empathized with the dead,
understood them. But he envied them, too.
“No helping
that, now. I’ll make sure whoever you want to have it gets it. Promise. But you
got to let go. All right?”
She twisted over
the twin bracelets in his hands, faintly yellow again. Glad to know her friend
was okay, if nothing else.
He wished he
could do more for her. Spirits of children were his least favorites. Not
because of the spirits themselves—they were no worse, nor better, than any
others. He just didn’t like knowing how young they’d died, and so often
terribly.
“Tell me about
Keisha,” he said.
She didn’t
speak, of course. Instead, she shared memories. Two girls on the swing set,
daring each other to jump off the higher they flew. Painting each other’s nails
in a bright purple bedroom. Holding hands, skipping home from school in the
rain. In every memory, both of them, together.
The
groundskeeper’s insides twisted. It’d been a long time since he’d been that
close with anyone. He said nothing, did nothing, merely stood as silent witness
to the ghost’s memories of the friend she was leaving behind.
The spirit
glowed softly gold, shimmering like morning mist.
As the memories
faded, she faded alongside them, until at last she winked out.
The stairwell
was dark and empty, the air clear. Layla Brown’s fear had gone along with her.
The
groundskeeper breathed deep, feeling like a weight had lifted off him. For a
moment, he was satisfied. Another spirit sent on, at peace now, he hoped.
Living folks saved further trouble, even if none of them realized it.
Then he looked
at the bent handrail, the busted support, the shattered glass, and he sighed.
Easier to deal with a haunting’s aftermath when the spirit was confined to a
cemetery, where there was less to destroy and destruction could more easily be
explained by natural phenomenon.
He stuck the
support back in the stone and reattached the rail, swept the glass to the side.
He found the caution tape a ways down the street. Best he could, he hung it
back across the stairwell’s entrance before trudging uphill and uptown to tie
the two friendship bracelets back on the fence by the school.
Excerpted from THE KEEPER OF LONELY
SPIRITS by E.M. Anderson. Copyright © 2025 by E.M. Anderson. Published by MIRA,
an imprint of HTP/HarperCollins.
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