Book Club Buzz: PAPER GHOSTS by Sarah Addison Allen

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September 1, 2026

PAPER GHOSTS
Sarah Addison Allen

St. Martin's Press

9/1/26

Fiction

Hardcover, 288 pages

"Satisfaction on every page."

—Booklist (starred review)

"Atmospheric, compelling."

—Library Journal

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 to have the future we really want, sometimes we need to live with the past, and not let go of it.

Dear Reader,

Have you ever seen a ghost? I haven’t, but an idea was sparked when I realized the only ghosts everyone can see are photographs. They’re paper ghosts. They speak for people long gone, saying simply, “I was here.”

I became fascinated by the many ways we can be haunted — by photographs, by scent, by music, by generational curses, even by actual spirits. And to have the future we really want, sometimes we need to live with the past, not let go of it.

Part love story, part ghost story — I hope you’ll be spirited away by Paper Ghosts.

-Sarah Addison Allen

Book Club Menu

A Paper Ghosts menu is all about balancing the cozy, spooky warmth of the present with the quirky, retro flair of the past.

Tea is a quiet anchor in Paper Ghosts. Weekly hot tea is an important ritual between grandmother Willamena and granddaughter Bailey in the Wester House. To capture the spirit of those visits, The Ghost of Wester House Signature Tea Blend was created just for readers.

But if you want a colder tea treat, there’s a downtown ice cream shop in the book known for its Halloween tea-infused flavors. There’s The Ghost of Earl Grey (an Earl Grey-steeped ice cream with a rich blackberry jam swirl), Jack-o’-Lantern Pumpkin Chai (an ice cream that tastes like crisp October evenings), or Witches’ Brew Pistachio and Green Tea.

Ice Cream Tea Recipes

The heart of the kitchen in the Wester House belongs to a stack of kitschy, mid-century Betty Crocker subscription recipe cards from the 1970s. The dishes are served with total seriousness in the story's flashback timeline, but they take on a funny, nostalgic life of their own in the present day when Tug discovers them. As he says, sometimes cooking just needs a sense of humor.

For that retro flair, you can lean into the campy classics mentioned in the story: Sombrero Pie, Frosted Meatloaf, or vintage Oven Porcupines (which are rice-and-beef meatballs). Or, for an appetizer, there are salami slices wrapped around potato salad, secured with a toothpick — the ultimate 1970s finger food. Images of the original 1970s subscription recipe cards with their famously moody photography can be easily found online.

I wanted to use food in Paper Ghosts as a bridge across time, a reminder that food, like memories, is often how we keep the people we love close to us.

-Sarah Addison Allen

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