paper ghosts book review

Paper Ghosts

Julia heaberlin.

351 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 2018

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"It steals someone for no reason. It taunts us with bits and pieces of the person we love like a kidnapper holding up a phone so we can briefly hear the voice. Dementia is like any other serial killer – except there's no way to fight back. Not yet."

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An obsessed woman hits the road with the man who may have killed her sister

Texas author Julia Heaberlin writes poetically about the geographic enormity of the Lone Star State, marveling at its “monotonous, beautiful solitude.” Like many writers before her, she is in thrall to its atmosphere and the desolation one can feel driving through the vast empty spaces that separate its small towns and modern cities. This makes for a perfect setting for a gritty road-trip novel like Heaberlin’s “Paper Ghosts.”

Heaberlin begins the tale with a shocker: Rachel, the narrator’s sister, falls into an open grave. The girl, 12, climbs out unharmed, but the scene is a predictor of future tragedy. Seven years later, Rachel goes missing for real.

After more than a decade of searching, the obsessed narrator — whose name we don’t learn until the end of the book — has found the man she thinks took Rachel. Finding him was no small feat: It took “dozens of interviews. Hundreds of suspects. Thousands of documents,” she explains. “Reading, stalking, stealing. It’s been a singular, no-holds-barred obsession since I was twelve and my sister’s bike didn’t make it the three miles in broad daylight from our house to her summer babysitting job.”

Why Ruth Ware’s new thriller is a classic

The narrator’s search reaches this point after she finds a photo of two young girls in the house where she and her sister grew up. Our intrepid sleuth connects the photo to a published book of photographs taken by a man named Carl Louis Feldman, who was found not guilty of killing another girl. He’s also been a person of interest in the disappearances of other young women whose photos he took. The narrator tracks Feldman to a halfway house where he is allegedly living in the fog of dementia. She can’t figure him out. “Some days I think I’m just messing with an eccentric and mortally sick old man. Some days, I think he is messing with me.”

Are his comments cryptic messages or evidence of an unraveling mind? “I don’t know if I killed anyone,” Carl tells her, “but I’ve always considered every picture I take to be a little murder. My Hasselblad sounded like a gunshot when I fired it. A solid, good sound. That, and it’s inevitable that my subjects will be dead someday when someone looks at their pictures.”

Our narrator proposes a 10-day road trip. She and the surprisingly likable Feldman travel to three places where women he photographed went missing. If she can get him to admit he killed these women, maybe he’ll also admit to killing her sister, the narrator hopes.

If you can buy into the premise that the narrator is so desperate to solve her sister’s disappearance that she puts her own life in danger by hitting the road with a suspected killer, you’ll enjoy the journey and all its macabre side trips. You’ll love the travel commentary written in Heaberlin’s lean, muscular prose: “The moon is a giant orange ball playing hide-and-seek with a bank of night clouds. Soothing, if driving this pitch-black country road didn’t feel like being buried alive, if the tires weren’t moaning against the asphalt, if I didn’t think there was a serial killer sleeping beside me.”

‘Not a Sound’: A thriller worth staying up all night to finish

Their primary destinations are Waco, Calvert and Galveston, where three missing women were last seen. There are overnight stays in seedy motels and a side trip to a veterinarian to get help for a gut-shot dog they pick up along the way. Because their macabre journey first takes them to Waco, it’s fitting they visit the scene of the deadly 1993 standoff at the Branch Davidians’ compound.

Heaberlin, whose previous books include “ Black-Eyed Susans ” and “ Lie Still ,” writes in the book’s acknowledgments that all her books are an ode to Texas. “Paper Ghosts” zigs and zags through its roughly 268,000 square miles as Austin, Marfa and the Pine Curtain of East Texas are added to the itinerary. They, too, are lovingly celebrated for their quirks and unusual sensibilities.

The paper ghosts in Feldman’s photos haunt this journey but are sometimes no match for the narrator’s spooky ruminations: “I imagine how it would feel to stop the truck, pull my gun out of the console, and shoot him in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert. I’d watch his blood land like black raindrops on the dark leather. It could be the most satisfying second of my life — the price maybe being every single second afterward.”

Every journey reaches its end, and the one in “Paper Ghosts” comes on fast and furious. Signposts along the way warn of angst, secrets and deadly plot twists, but you’ll never see what’s coming. You’ll step out of this fictional vehicle feeling like you’ve been T-boned by an 18-wheeler.

Carol Memmott  is a writer based in Northern Virginia.

PAPER GHOSTS

By Julia Heaberlin

Ballantine. 342 pp. $26

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Review: Paper Ghosts by Julia Heaberlin

By kristin centorcelli.

Paper Ghosts

Julia heaberlin.

May 15, 2018

Paper Ghosts by Julia Heaberlin once again swerves the serial killer genre in a new direction—one where you won’t see the final, terrifying twist spinning your way until the very last mile.

Julia Heaberlin has a reputation for creepy suspense, but she takes it up a notch (and then some) in the eminently quotable Paper Ghosts . Our unnamed—well, she’s eventually named, but I have to keep some things a secret—heroine (anti-heroine?) is only 24, but the disappearance of her older sister Rachel 12 years ago has shaped her in a profound way. So much so that she’s been obsessed with finding Rachel’s (possible) killer—or at least finding out why she disappeared, since no body was ever found.

She finds a photo taped to the underside of the basement stairs in her family home, which kicks off her interest in famous photographer Carl Louis Feldman. She becomes convinced that Carl had something to do with her sister’s disappearance, as the photographer was linked to a number of other murders. He’s her prime suspect, and she’s finally tracked him down to a halfway house. Carl claims to have dementia, but she’s not so sure.

I wonder what Carl is thinking. Maybe about how he’d like to kill me. I’m twenty-four, in the age range. White. Slender. People say I look like my sister. The difference is, she was lit from the inside. Dramatic. Gutzy. A performer. People drifted to her. Loved her. Carl drifted to her, and snatched her life. Maybe he thinks I am my sister come back to haunt him. I am the understudy, Carl. A shell of her, loaded with dynamite, set on revenge. The nervous one in the wings about to jump onstage. You and I, we will be co-stars. I am also a perfect stranger every time I come here, or he’s lying. Each time, he claims to forget my name. He won’t answer when I ask why, in June, he is wearing a Christmas tie leering with Grinch faces, or tell me where he bought his leaden, ancient boots, or the prettiest place he remembers they last took him. Boots always remind me of vistas. Of standing firm and steady on a dangerous precipice while beauty unfolds for miles before your eyes.

Our narrator is paying close attention to Carl’s every move, and she’s convinced he’s faking much of his condition. But that’s ok because she’s trained for this. Literally. I’ll get to that later, but this lady is prepared. Or she thinks she is. Eventually, even though Carl doesn’t believe for a second that she’s his long-lost daughter, he agrees to a road trip.

Carl calmly tugs a square of yellow paper out of his pocket and begins to unfold it. “I want to hear you say it.” “I need to know if you’re a killer. As your daughter, I need to know what kind of blood runs in my veins. You owe it to me.” The first and last line, at least, are true. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? So we’re clear this trip isn’t about bonding or breathing fresh air. If you were really my daughter, you would have told me that from the start. You would have talked about how you don’t want your babies to be killers. You would have cried big tears. And you would have gotten out of here just as fast as you could. That’s what normal girls do.”

But she’s anything but normal, and Carl agrees to the trip, with caveats. Also, he’ll do just about anything to get out of the halfway house. She’s got everything planned down to the tiniest detail, and it’s taken her a long time. But she really didn’t plan on Carl. He’s definitely … something. What follows is a surreal Texas road trip, hitting most of the places where Carl’s supposed victims were taken or died, designed to tease info out of Carl and hopefully pigeonhole him into admitting he killed Rachel. Cat and mouse indeed. But who is the cat, and who is the mouse?

Here’s the thing: Carl is charming. At one point, he startles the crap out of his chaperone when he rushes off into the brush to rescue a small dog, and boy does he keep her on her toes. It’s hard for her to reconcile this possible serial killer with this odd dog lover who, even if he may be faking some physical symptoms, actually appears to see “ghosts.” Two of them, in fact, and he even talks to them. But she’s very, very devoted to her cause, and their search leads them to a cabin in the piney woods where a few answers await. But they’re not what she expected, and neither is Carl.

Like I said, she trained for this. Intensely. She actually found someone on the Dark Web that would put her in dangerous situations and teach her how to get out of them. She takes dedication to a whole different level. She also takes obsession to frightening levels. Half her life has been devoted to finding out what happened to her sister, and it’s taken a toll, emotionally and physically. Her grief is all consuming. Even a romance with an FBI agent that worked her sisters case (don’t worry, it didn’t start until she was about 19), one that she would have liked to have continued, was smothered by her need for answers.

Paper Ghosts , a title referring in large part to the images in Carl’s haunting photos, works on multiple levels. It’s an effective thriller, but it’s also a deep look at obsession and the destructive nature of grief—as well as a creepy-as-hell tour of some of the oddest places in Texas. Heaberlin’s prose, at times, approaches a kind of gritty poetry as she takes readers on a very unusual murder mystery tour with a very unusual narrator.

If you think you know where this one is going, you’ll need to check those expectations at the door. Set aside some time for this one because you won’t want to put it down.

Learn More Or Order A Copy

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Book review: how to solve your own murder by kristen perrin, book review: a deadly walk in devon by nicholas george, book review: the dredge by brendan flaherty, kristin centorcelli.

I’ve already been eagerly awaiting reading this one but after your wonderful review I’ll be trying to get my hands on a copy even quicker. Thank you!

Thank you so much! Hope you enjoy it!

You had me at “creepy suspense”. I just love these types of books & this one has been on my TBR on Goodreads! Thank you for he chance to win!

Successive Jamaican governments have failed to enhance the kind of technical training he benefited from and which he thinks would better serve Jamaica’s young men and women.

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Word of Mouth

Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, paper ghosts.

Let me offer a disclaimer before I jump into my review of PAPER GHOSTS. I was so taken with the concept behind this tale that I would have given Julia Heaberlin a solid ‘A’ for effort even if it had been flawed in the execution. That said, the author’s plan successfully survives the fog of the battle known as publication. Haunting photographs peppered throughout the narrative (please avoid the urge to peek) constitute an additional reason to read PAPER GHOSTS in one sitting. It picks you up, carries you off, and spoils you --- at least temporarily --- for anything else.

The first person narrator is a young woman named Grace, who is obsessed with the mystery of her older sister’s disappearance over a decade before the novel’s present. Grace believes that she has found the individual responsible in the form of Carl Louis Feldman, one of the more interesting literary characters you are likely to encounter during this or any year. Carl gained fame for having published a bestselling book of photographs some years previously, and achieved notoriety as the suspected serial killer of several women. After being tried, but not convicted, for one murder, he went off the grid for a few years, only to subsequently reappear exhibiting symptoms of dementia.

"I will not forget any time soon the setting of the final revelation, at which point Grace gets her answers. It’s a simple scene, and the more startling and real for it. Set all else aside to read this fine and memorable work."

As PAPER GHOSTS opens, Grace has traced Carl to a private care home. Convinced that he knows her sister’s fate, she temporarily removes him from the home under false pretenses and begins a 10-day road trip through Texas, hoping to obtain a confession from him as they visit the sites of some of his more chilling photographs, as well as places where his possible victims were last seen. Grace has her doubts that he is suffering from dementia, and Carl doesn’t believe it when she tells him and everyone else that she is his daughter.

The result is a potentially dangerous game of mobile liar's poker, played out from Galveston to Houston to Marfa and beyond. Grace has everything meticulously planned out, but Carl isn’t cooperating, happy to throw a monkey wrench into her plans with impulsive actions and an occasional frolic of his own. Of course, Grace is always on high alert, given that she may be riding with a serial murderer. As their trip progresses, she becomes increasingly certain that Carl is nowhere near as infirm as he has made himself out to be. Neither she nor the reader has any idea what will happen next, making each page --- particularly those containing the haunting conclusions --- all the more shocking.

Don’t expect a lot of flash-bangs and explosions over the course of PAPER GHOSTS. Heaberlin doesn’t need them. She is a very subtle wordsmith, hinting in places instead of telling and preferring suspense to outright horror. I will not forget any time soon the setting of the final revelation, at which point Grace gets her answers. It’s a simple scene, and the more startling and real for it. Set all else aside to read this fine and memorable work.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub on May 25, 2018

Paper Ghosts by Julia Heaberlin

• Publication Date: May 7, 2019
• Genres: Fiction , Psychological Suspense , Psychological Thriller , Suspense , Thriller
• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• ISBN-10: 0804178046
• ISBN-13: 9780804178044

Paper Ghosts

“(An) artful and elegiac psychological thriller.” —Publishers Weekly starred review

Sunday Times of London Thriller of the Month LibraryReads Top Ten pick for May RT Reviews Top Pick for May More media praise

FOUR COLD CASES ACROSS TEXAS. A SUSPECTED KILLER WHO CLAIMS DEMENTIA. AND ONE MYSTERIOUS YOUNG WOMAN AT THE WHEEL.

An obsessive young woman has been waiting half her life—since she was twelve years old—for this moment. She has planned. Researched. Trained. Imagined every scenario. Now she is almost certain the man who kidnapped and murdered her sister sits in the passenger seat beside her.

Carl Louis Feldman is a documentary photographer. The young woman claims to be his long-lost daughter. He doesn’t believe her. He claims no memory of murdering girls across Texas, in a string of places where he shot eerie pictures. She doesn’t believe him.

Determined to find the truth, she lures him out of a halfway house and proposes a dangerous idea: a ten-day road trip, just the two of them, to examine cold cases linked to his haunting photographs.

“The author wields words like weapons, with each one chosen to heighten tension, underscore emotion, or foreshadow doom. Keen character work further distinguishes the tale …. Heaberlin brilliantly combines travelogue with a heartbreaking portrait of the damage done by childhood trauma.” —Publishers Weekly , starred review (read the full review )

“A rich hybrid work that’s at once a zany, dialogue-propelled two-hander, a murder mystery, a road novel, a pair of psychological case studies and a meditation on photography. It would make a fine indie movie, although screen adaptation would entail sacrificing Heaberlin’s evocative prose.” —Sunday Times of London , Thriller of the Month (read the full review )

“The tension crackles on the page…Heaberlin writes with passion and poetry about Texas, photography and the tragedy and comedy of dementia. As with her previous novel, Black Eyed Susans , it elevates the often tawdry genre of the serial killer novel to a work of art.” —The Sunday Express (UK), five stars (read the full review )

“I kept thinking of (Patricia) Highsmith while reading Paper Ghosts … Heaberlin isn’t as grimly fatalistic…her books pop with bursts of off-kilter humor…[she] anchors her books with troubled but endearingly badass women. Think Amy Schumer’s character in Trainwreck , except with guns and the greater possibility of redemption. Yet like Highsmith, Heaberlin displays a keen grasp of the casual cruelty that defines human interaction, not to mention a flair for stories in which no one—least of all the protagonist—can be trusted…Texas has yet again bred a major American noir writer.” —D Magazine (read the full review )

“You’ll enjoy the journey and all its macabre side trips. You’ll love the travel commentary written in Heaberlin’s lean, muscular prose…. Signposts along the way warn of angst, secrets and deadly plot twists, but you’ll never see what’s coming. You’ll step out of this fictional vehicle feeling like you’ve been T-boned by an 18-wheeler.” —The Washington Post

“This outstanding thriller will blow you out of your lawn chair.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Strong characterization, haunting images, a wonderful sense of place, and dark comedy make this travelogue-cum-psychological thriller well worth the read.” —The Guardian

“ Paper Ghosts is top-notch suspense, a dangerous game of hide-and-go-seek, masterfully crafted … Heaberlin conjures a foreboding atmosphere of exquisite tension…. Clues are dark, thin threads in a tangled bird’s nest; this is a mystery requiring your attention.” —Michelle Newby, Lone Star Literary Life (read the full review )

“Beautifully written and wonderfully chilling.” — Sarah Pinborough, author of the New York Times bestseller Behind Her Eyes

“ Paper Ghosts is an exceptional read, with a deftly woven plot—a book to devour in one sitting. This is breathless storytelling at its very best, with a deeply satisfying ending which will give books groups—and all your friends, when you recommend it—much to discuss.” —Elizabeth Haynes, New York Times bestselling author of Into the Darkest Corner

“This book haunted me. Such a gripping exploration of obsession and loss: of those we love, but also our memories and sense of self. The writing is beautiful and chilling, laced with a subtle dark humour, and the multiple twists build to a perfect icy shiver of an ending. I loved it!” —C J Tudor, author of The Chalk Man

“Heaberlin’s new psychological suspense novel takes readers across the vast and changing landscape of Texas, a perfect backdrop to the deteriorating mind of suspected killer Carl Louis Feldman. The timing is perfect, the layers of the story both peel away and deepen as the search into the mind of a killer takes turns no one is expecting.“ —RT Reviews (Top Pick for May)

“Heaberlin’s spot-on depiction of mental anguish, her careful creation of characters who are mean and troubled yet compelling, and an unexpected twist at the end make this a winner; suggest it especially to patrons who like a Texas backdrop and or the work of Megan Abbott.” —Booklist (Henrietta Verma)

“Julia Heaberlin’s Paper Ghosts is a stunner; a creepy, complicated thriller that crawls under your skin from the outset; the kind of ‘there’s no way is going to end well’ story in which you know that what the character is doing is a very, very bad idea, but you can’t look away. A chilling, nuanced, just-one-more-page thriller from a master of psychological suspense.” —Karen Dionne, author of The Marsh King’s Daughter

“ Paper Ghosts tackles the distressing subject of murder, and also dementia, with sensitivity and respect. The light and shade in the writing is mesmeric. Utterly compelling. I’m convinced if everybody had a Barfly in their life, the world would be a better place!” —Ali Land, author of Good Me Bad Me

“With prose as sharp and flinty as the book’s protagonist, Paper Ghosts takes a deep dive into the murky well of moral ambiguity as one woman’s obsession with her missing sister collides with a serial killer’s dementia over the course of a thrill packed road trip deep in the heart of Texas. A novel that brilliantly asks you to question everything you see (and don’t see) around you.” —Nina Sadowsky, author of Just Fall and The Burial Society

“Julia Heaberlin’s Paper Ghosts is the spellbinding, brilliantly original story of a young woman desperate to find her missing sister and the man she suspects knows the truth, joined together on a perilous journey as elusive and mysterious as the paper ghosts that lure them. Heaberlin’s love for Texas spills across every page.” —Carla Buckley, author of The Good Goodbye

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Look Inside

Paper Ghosts

A Novel of Suspense

By Julia Heaberlin

By julia heaberlin read by catherine taber, category: suspense & thriller | women's fiction, category: suspense & thriller | women's fiction | audiobooks.

May 07, 2019 | ISBN 9780804178044 | 5-3/16 x 8 --> | ISBN 9780804178044 --> Buy

May 15, 2018 | ISBN 9780804178037 | ISBN 9780804178037 --> Buy

May 15, 2018 | 603 Minutes | ISBN 9780525493174 --> Buy

Buy from Other Retailers:

May 07, 2019 | ISBN 9780804178044

May 15, 2018 | ISBN 9780804178037

May 15, 2018 | ISBN 9780525493174

603 Minutes

Buy the Audiobook Download:

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About Paper Ghosts

A Texas map marked with three red dots like drops of blood. A serial killer who claims to have dementia. A mysterious young woman who wants answers. What could go wrong? FINALIST FOR THE ITW THRILLER AWARD • “Fast and furious . . . You’ll never see what’s coming.”— The Washington Post   Years ago, her sister Rachel vanished. Now she is almost certain the man who took Rachel sits in the passenger seat beside her. He claims to have dementia and no memory of murdering girls across Texas in a string of places where he shot eerie pictures. To find the truth, she proposes a dangerous idea: a ten-day road trip with a possible serial killer to examine cold cases linked to his haunting photographs. Is he a liar or a broken old man? Is he a pathological con artist—or is she? You won’t see the final, terrifying twist spinning your way until the very last mile.   Praise for  Paper Ghosts   “ Paper Ghosts  is a riveting summer read that shows Texas in a powerfully intimate light.” — The Austin Chronicle   “[An] artful and elegiac psychological thriller . . . riveting.” — Publishers Weekly  (starred review)   “[ Paper Ghosts ] elevates the often tawdry genre of the serial killer novel to a work of art.” — Sunday Express  (UK)    “Texas has yet again bred a major American noir writer.” — D Magazine   “ [Heaberlin has] developed a distinctive literary voice, one that is on full display in  Paper Ghosts .” —Houston Chronicle   “Entertainingly unnerving.” — The Dallas Morning News “Strong characterisation, haunting images, a wonderful sense of place, and some dark comedy make this travelogue-cum-psychological thriller well worth the read.” — The Guardian

Listen to a sample from Paper Ghosts

Also by julia heaberlin.

About Julia Heaberlin

Julia Heaberlin is the author of the critically acclaimed Black-Eyed Susans, a USA Today and Times (U.K.) bestseller. Her psychological thrillers, which also include Paper Ghosts (finalist for the ITW Thriller Award for Best Novel), Playing Dead, and Lie Still,… More about Julia Heaberlin

Product Details

Category: suspense & thriller | women’s fiction, category: suspense & thriller | women’s fiction | audiobooks, you may also like.

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“You’ll enjoy the journey and all its macabre side trips. You’ll love the travel commentary written in Heaberlin’s lean, muscular prose. . . . Signposts along the way warn of angst, secrets and deadly plot twists, but you’ll never see what’s coming. You’ll step out of this fictional vehicle feeling like you’ve been T-boned by an 18-wheeler.” — The Washington Post “A rich hybrid work that’s at once a zany, dialogue-propelled two-hander, a murder mystery, a road novel, a pair of psychological case studies and a meditation on photography. It would make a fine indie movie, although screen adaptation would entail sacrificing Heaberlin’s evocative prose.” — The Sunday Times  (UK), Thriller of the Month “I kept thinking of [Patricia] Highsmith while reading  Paper Ghosts . . . . Heaberlin anchors her books with troubled but endearingly badass women. . . . Like Highsmith, Heaberlin displays a keen grasp of casual cruelty that defines human interaction, not to mention a flair for stories in which no one—least of all the protagonist—can be trusted. . . . Texas has yet again bred a major American noir writer.” — D Magazine “[An] artful and elegiac psychological thriller . . . Heaberlin brilliantly combines travelogue with a heartbreaking portrait of the damage done by childhood. . . . [She] wields words like weapons, with each one chosen to heighten tension, underscore emotion, or foreshadow doom.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Entertainingly unnerving.” — The Dallas Morning News “Strong characterisation, haunting images, a wonderful sense of place, and some dark comedy make this travelogue-cum-psychological thriller well worth the read.” — The Guardian “ Paper Ghosts  is a riveting summer read that shows Texas in a powerfully intimate light.” — The Austin Chronicle “The emotion is amazing. The scenes and characters are both so strong and so believable. . . . Get ready to be terrified!” — Suspense Magazine “Heaberlin’s spot-on depiction of mental anguish, her careful creation of characters who are mean and troubled yet compelling, and an unexpected twist at the end make this a winner.” — Booklist “Heaberlin’s works beautifully evoke the texture and landscape of the state of Texas while acknowledging the ambivalence and occasional menace that underlies the sublime beauty of the state, and her latest is no exception.” —CrimeReads  “Top-notch suspense, a dangerous game of hide-and-go-seek, masterfully crafted.” — Lone Star Literary “The layers of the story both peel away and deepen as the search into the mind of a killer takes turns no one is expecting.” — RT Book Reviews “This outstanding thriller will blow you out of your lawn chair.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune “Breathless storytelling at its very best.” — Elizabeth Haynes,  New York Times  bestselling author of  Into the Darkest Corner

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Reviews, new releases and more, paper ghosts [review].

Title: Paper Ghosts Author: Julia Hearberlin Publisher: Penguin

My Sister disappeared. I know who took her. Now I’ve taken him. ———- Carl Louis Feldman is an old man who once took photographs. That was before he was tried for murder and acquitted. Before dementia and his admission to a Texas care facility. Now his daughter has come to see him, to take him on a trip. Only she’s not his daughter, and, if she has her way, he’s not coming back . . . Because Carl’s past has finally caught up with him. The woman driving the car is convinced he’s guilty, and that he’s killed other young women. Including her sister Rachel. Now they’re driving across Texas, following his photographs, his clues, his crimes. To see if he remembers any of it. To discover what happened to Rachel. Has Carl truly forgotten what he did or is he just pretending? Perhaps he’s guilty of nothing and she’s the liar. Either way, in driving him into the Texan badlands she’s taking a terrible risk. For if Carl really is a serial killer, she’s alone in the most dangerous place of all…

[My Review]

Having hugely enjoyed Black Eyed Susans , I was really excited to read Paper Ghosts , and though it took a little longer to get into, I found this to be an interesting and, at times, quite creepy novel.

Main character Grace has her own aims when she offers to take her ‘father’ on a road trip – her sister Rachel disappeared years ago and the Police’s main suspect was (is?) her supposed grandfather, Carl. She wants to finally find out what’s happening, and will seemingly stop at nothing to do so…

The story starts off with a lot of impact, but it is quite a slow burner. A lot of the plot centers around the dialogue and ‘games’ the two play with eachother, meaning if you’re looknig for a ‘thrilling’ read, this probably isn’t for you. However, the tension builds as the novel continues and I found myself really wondering who knows what , and how much is actually a lie? I liked this element of doubt that Julia throws in.

The use of photographs added to the impact and ultimately the story becomes less about who the killer is, and more about how Grace will ‘deal’ with Carl. Julia Heaberlin’s writing is really skillful and makes you want to know more by teasing out little details via Grace, which did leave me feeling a little confused at times (but wanting to know more) with an added sense of ‘chill’ surrounding the whole, horrible case – at times you can almost feel Grace’s desperation bouncing off the page. Paper Ghosts is a very well-written, slow-building story which I enjoyed.

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Paper ghosts: a novel of suspense, by julia heaberlin, recommendations from our site.

“A young woman, obsessed with finding who killed her sister more than a decade ago, thinks she’s identified the culprit. The rub is that the man suffers from dementia. Lyrical prose, characters with hidden agendas, and a non-stop undercurrent of tension make this a must read.” Read more...

The Best Thrillers of 2019

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Theresa Smith Writes

Delighting in all things bookish, new release book review: paper ghosts by julia heaberlin, paper ghosts…, about the book:.

Carl Louis Feldman is an old man who once took photographs. That was before he was tried for murder and acquitted. Before dementia and his admission to a Texas care facility. Now his daughter has come to see him, to take him on a trip. Only she’s not his daughter, and, if she has her way, he’s not coming back . . . Because Carl’s past has finally caught with him. The woman driving the car is convinced he’s guilty, and that he’s killed other young women. Including her sister Rachel. Now they’re driving across Texas, following his photographs, his clues, his crimes. To see if he remembers any of it. To discover what happened to Rachel. Has Carl truly forgotten what he did or is he just pretending? Perhaps he’s guilty of nothing and she’s the liar. Either way, in driving him into the Texan badlands she’s taking a terrible risk. For if Carl really is a serial killer, she’s alone in the most dangerous place of all . . .

My Thoughts:

Julia Heaberlin is my queen of psychological thrillers. Her stories drip with dread while also beating with a strong heart. Paper Ghosts has a such a chilling premise, revenge in extremis. The minute I had this book in my hands, all others were left on the pile, and I hardly ever do that, being the methodical reader that I am.

When Grace was twelve, her nineteen year old sister vanished, never to be seen or heard from again. As the investigation ran cold, Grace’s quest for uncovering the truth just burned hotter. Through Grace, Julia picks apart the devastating effects an unsolved crime can have on a family and the lengths a person might go to in order to achieve a sense of closure. I really loved Grace, despite her recklessness and her low regard for her own life. She was incredibly focused, highly intelligent, and far braver than she gave herself credit for. But her personal investment in the case she was determined to solve was the one thing blocking her from actually solving it. Her pain was raw and I don’t think she went into this road trip with a plan for what was going to happen after, which really weighed on me and broke my heart for her.

Carl is suffering from early onset dementia. In his early sixties, he has been acquitted for murder and is living out the rest of his days in a state nursing home. He remains a person of interest in relation to several missing women, but a lack of evidence determines his ongoing freedom. Formerly a successful photographer, he is no longer trusted with a camera, since it is widely believed since his trial that his photography is linked to his victims. Through Carl, Julia speculates on just how circumstantial court cases can be, and how easy it is to see what we want to see, rather than the truth that is waiting in the wings. She also shows, once again, just how sticky mud is. Once thrown, it’s almost impossible to shake off, and you’re left contemplating just how many people live out their lives bearing weight of another person’s crime.

I’m going to have to ramble in a vague and hopefully enticing fashion for the rest of this review because no one likes a thriller spoiled. Paper Ghosts has a very human side to it and the journey is equally as important as the ending. As Grace and Carl set out on their road trip, you have to wonder where her head is. Deliberately provoking a serial killer in a confined space seems like a death wish. Yet Grace is fearless. And she’s prepared for everything…except for Carl himself. Because he has way about him, a natural wit and devil-may-care attitude that is hard to resist. And it becomes apparent, as the days pass, that the two have formed a bond, as hard as that is to believe. I really enjoyed seeing the relationship unfold – even considering Carl’s status as a supposed serial killer.

“I wish I’d thought to ask Carl for his more industrial flashlight. How weird and dysfunctional is our relationship that I’m certain my sister’s killer would obligingly agree to give me the better flashlight. That, minutes earlier, without a thought, I’d let him drink the last drop out of my water bottle.”

The trip is of course mutually beneficial. Grace feels as though she will get retribution for her sister. Carl gets to escape the nursing home and indulge in a few culinary delights. But somewhere along the way, Carl changes the game, and instead of Grace dictating the rules and laying the trap, he begins to the use the road trip to his own advantage. Carl is a fascinating character. He clearly has dementia, but he’s not so befuddled that he loses his edge. There are many times where I was consumed with dread, unsure on what he was going to do next. He excelled at the cat and mouse routine and was clearly enjoying himself for much of the trip. He’s an excellent example of impeccable characterisation.

“Lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth. That’s Dostoyevsky. Lots of shit happens in a barn. That’s pure Carl Feldman.”

There was a heady atmosphere infused throughout the story. Texas appears larger than life, almost like a character itself. And who knew that Texas had such a bloody history? Julia wove these historical incidents of crime into the narrative with style, ramping up the dread, case by case. It was also quite fascinating! Texas is of course an enormous state and this vastness was conveyed along with a sense of lawlessness. Guns were common, and even expected. A tension simmered as intensely as the relentless heat. And when you drive around poking sleeping bears, some of them wake up. In terms of resolution, this novel wraps up especially well. More than one case is solved, but sometimes even resolution fails to bring complete peace and happiness. There’s that reality check that is threaded all the way through each of Julia Heaberlin’s novels. And I love her all the more for it.

Paper Ghosts is an incredible read. It kept me guessing all the way through and reading long into the night. I highly recommend it as one of 2018’s top thrillers.

Paper Ghosts is published by Penguin Random House in the UK, USA, and Australia .

About the Author:

Julia Heaberlin grew up in Decatur, Texas, a small town that sits under a big sky. It provided a dreamy girl with a great library, a character behind every door, and as many secrets as she’d find anyplace else. An award-winning journalist, she has worked as an editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Dallas Morning News and the Detroit News. Paper Ghosts is her fourth psychological thriller set in Texas. She lives near Dallas/Fort Worth with her husband and has a son who attends the University of Texas at Austin.

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Paper Ghosts

By julia heaberlin.

Paper Ghosts is a compelling read about a young girl’s struggle to be brave in the wake of her older sisters being missing and presumed dead.

The unnamed protagonist believes her sister was killed by Carl Feldman a fine art photographer and suspected serial killer living out his days in a halfway house. Does he really have early onset dementia and no memory of the supposed killings he was once accused of or is he pretending? Was he wrongly accused of those murders or is she putting her life in danger by driving around remote Texas with a serial killer?

Paper Ghosts is a compelling read about a young girl’s struggle to be brave in the wake of her older sisters being missing and presumed dead.

This was the first book I had read by Julia Heaberlin and if Paper Ghosts is any indication of the standard of her books then I can declare myself a fan.

The layout of the book contributes to the story as it is interspersed with eerie photos mentioned within the book and pages from a notebook of fears written by the protagonist in an attempt to conquer her numerous fears.

The prologue is designed to pull the reader in right from the start and had the effect of making me connect with the unnamed protagonist from an early stage.

“When she was twelve, my sister fell into a grave…my sister climbed out of that grave by herself without a scratch on her. I look back and think that’s the day, the moment, she was cursed. When she was nineteen, she disappeared, like a lasso dropped from the clouds and snatched her up. I know it was the day I became afraid of things.”

In the present unnamed girl Is sat in a halfway house playing chess with the man she suspects of killing her sister. Carl claims not to remember her each time she visits and questions her about who she is. She tells him she is his daughter and she wants to take him on a road trip of his suspected kill sites in the hope it will jog his memory and she can discover if she has the blood of a killer in her veins.

She was 12 when her sister disappeared on her way to a babysitting job.

Carl was found by a police officer wandering around and that is how he ended up at this halfway house run by a woman named Mrs T who suspects the girl is lying but is annoyingly willing to let her drive off with a serial killer.

“The famous documentary and fine-art photographer Carl Louis Feldman, suspected of stalking young women and stealing them for years, said he couldn’t remember his own name. It took fingerprints and a sample of DNA to do that. A local hospital guessed a diagnosis of early onset dementia and sent him back out into the world.”

Carl has a list of conditions he wants the girl to fulfil if he is going to come with her including some ominous requests like a shovel that would have any normal person running for the hills. The girl is clearly not normal though and that is one of the things I love about her character. She is outwardly tough and highly skilled but inside she is the same young and vulnerable girl she was when her sister first disappeared.  

The girl plans to follow her own map of places associated with women she believes Carl has killed. Her hope is that she will be able to discover once and for all what happened to her sister. She also uses a series of photos of the victims in an attempt to get him to remember something.

“These girls – these cold cases – are my insistent, beating hope, the only way I know to jog Carl’s conscience. I have to follow their stories, because in Rachel’s case, there is no story to tell, no dot. No one remembers a girl on a silver mountain bike that morning. No one saw anything . She was simply gone.”

Along the way she forms an uneasy alliance with Carl and discovers to her horror that there are parts of him she could almost like.

“Bad people are to be found everywhere, but even among the worst there may be something good.”

Paper Ghosts is definitely a character led novel and the characters in it are outstanding and part of what makes it such a compulsive read. I can’t remember the last time I got so deeply drawn into a psychological thriller. It made me mad every time I had to put it down for other lesser things like work or eating and drinking.

The sense of anticipation built up throughout Paper Ghosts is immense and this book haunted me long after I finished it. I have been recommending it to everyone I speak to. Fantastic book, in fact it was so good that after finishing it I ordered more of the authors books.

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Chapter 1 “Who the hell are you?” I slide my queen one space closer to his king. “You know who I am.” He swipes his right arm, the one that still fully cooperates, across the board. A single, swift movement. Pieces fly, bounce off the carpet, rattle into corners fuzzed with dust from a past decade. I don’t flinch, something I’m practiced at. Neither does the only other occupant of the room, a deaf woman knitting an infinite patch of blue. Or green or gold or pink. It could be any color. She doesn’t have needles. Her hands work the air methodically while her invisible work piles up like an accordion. A wedding veil sits crookedly on the silvery threads struggling out of her scalp. The second hand on a plastic clock above her head jerks. I’ve wanted to rip that clock off the wall on every visit. Time for the people in this house is meaningless. No need to travel beyond the triple-locked front door or wonder who or what made the three long white scratches that run down its wood veneer. No good reason to think about the people who never visit you or the horrible things you’ve done. So what if you can’t remember that you never liked dark bananas or the canned laughter of I Love Lucy but now you eat one while watching the other? I wonder what Carl is thinking. Maybe about how he’d like to kill me. I’m twenty-four, in the age range. White. Slender. People say I look like my sister. The difference is, she was lit from the inside. Dramatic. Gutsy. A performer. People drifted to her. Loved her. Carl drifted to her, and snatched her life. Maybe he thinks I am my sister come back to haunt him. I am the understudy, Carl. A shell of her, loaded with dynamite, set on revenge. The nervous one in the wings about to jump onstage. You and I, we will be co-stars. I am also a perfect stranger every time I come here, or he’s lying. Each time, he claims to forget my name. He won’t answer when I ask why, in June, he is wearing a Christmas tie leering with Grinch faces, or tell me where he bought his leaden, ancient boots, or the prettiest place he remembers they last took him. Boots always remind me of vistas. Of standing firm and steady on a dangerous precipice while beauty unfolds for miles before your eyes. He’s unimpressed by any of my random musings on boots, or the Walt Whitman and John Grisham I read him by the only sunny window in this house, or the series of jokes about talking cows that I tell while we take walks around the neighborhood. Things any loved one would do. This afternoon at IHOP, I watched him drown his pancakes in strawberry syrup and knife them into a precise patchwork of bites. I wanted to ask, Does the syrup remind you of blood? He’s trying to make me think his eyes are glimpses into a dark solar system where he retreats, alone, but I won’t be fooled. I wonder what he sees in mine. Anything familiar? He’s a hell of an actor, according to old court testimony. Right now, with a harmless bit of violence, he’s reminding me that he’s still strong. Relevant. I already know. I’ve studied him carefully. Weighed the risks. Searched his room while he was in the shower and found his secret stash hidden in a battered suitcase under the bed—the red rubber exercise band that keeps up that knotty little bulge on his right forearm, and the ten-pound free weights. The sharpened pocketknife and the silver lighter with the engraved N, tucked into the zipper pocket along the back with a single cigarette. The 8X10 photograph, pressed carefully flat, under the lining. It could be 1920, or two years ago. Carl the photographer, whose Time Travel book of surreal images once hit the bestseller list, specializes in timeless. The corners of the paper are soft, and there’s a white crease in the middle that cuts the girl in two. She’s standing on a barren rusty landscape that’s probably never sucked up a drop of rain. A tiny silver key charm nestles in her throat. The same key that I know hangs out of sight, somewhere in the graying curl of his chest hair. I saw it once, when it slipped out of his shirt and dangled over the chessboard. Is she one of his victim’s, too? Old serial killers who roam free have to land somewhere, of course. I’ve thought about this a lot. They must get tired. Decide to pamper roses or grandchildren. Break hips and suffer heart attacks. Go impotent. Run out of money. Don’t see the car coming. Put guns to their heads. The killers who publicly beat the system, and the unseen monsters who are never caught and slip around like silent, pulsing background music. Screeching oboes and pounding drums. Only a few ever hear their soundtrack, right at the very end, and then it’s too late. It took a long, long time to find the man I believe killed my sister. Years. Dozens of interviews. Hundreds of suspects. Thousands of documents. Reading, stalking, stealing. It’s been a singular, no-holds-barred obsession since I was twelve and my sister’s bike didn’t make it the three miles in broad daylight from our house to her summer babysitting job. It was morning. Two sweet little boys, Oscar and Teddy Parker, were waiting for her on the other end. Hard to believe, but they are in high school now. Several months ago, their mother found my address and mailed Oscar’s college application essay with a note saying she hoped she was right to send it. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t unfold the piece of paper right away. I had no idea what it would say—I just knew that my sister was the subject. I tucked it in the frame of my bathroom mirror. I didn’t like thinking of her life as something to be critiqued and rated by college admissions personnel. It took me a month to work up the courage. Nothing, Oscar wrote, was ever the same. I was only five, but her disappearance changed everything. I wore the friendship bracelet we made together until the threads wore through and it fell off. No babysitter ever lived up to her. If I’m honest, no girl ever has. No assurance will make me feel safe again, yet I think of her every time I need to be brave. She’s the reason I want to major in criminal justice. I’d always thought of how deeply my sister’s death affected my family. Me. Even my physical body never felt the same, as if every cell was chemically changed, forever tweaked to high alert. I’d never once thought of the pain of the two little boys who begged her to read Harry Potter because she was so good at the voices. When Mrs. Parker called at 9:22 a.m. to ask why Rachel hadn’t shown up, I was getting out the flour to make chocolate chip cookies. My parents, both accountants, had left for work fifteen minutes before. I was twelve, charged with cleaning the house and making dinner in the summer. It was a normal day in a normal house. Is Rachel sick? Mrs. Parker had asked on the phone. She wasn’t mad, I remember, just concerned. Does she have a fever? An accident, I thought immediately. A car ran into her bike. She’s unconscious somewhere. The canister fell out of my hands onto the floor, scattering its powder across the black tile. No one cleaned it up for a long time. In the chaos that followed, people tracked flour all over our house, footprints that stayed for weeks. Months later, there was still the light whisper of them. It was like Rachel was there with us, walking around as a ghost. Now that I’m finally here with Carl, making my move, I wonder for the last time if I should call it all off. I’ve told no one of my plan to steal him out of this place and find the truth. It wouldn’t be the first promise I’ve broken to myself. The girl in his suitcase, with the tiny key to nothing, seemed to be begging me with her eyes to leave and not look back. I don’t want to think about what Carl could still do with two good hands. The air conditioner clunks on. A lukewarm breeze is blowing out of the vent in the ceiling. The wedding veil drifts, a cobweb caressing a wrinkled cheek. I kneel down to pick up the chess pieces and disappear under the card table. “Who the hell are you?” He’s shouting now, pounding the card table so it jars the top of my head. His boot shoots out, and he presses down purposefully on my hand until it hurts. I jerk my fingers back, refuse to cry out, open my fist to the lowliest piece on the board. A pawn, of course. “I’m your daughter,” I lie. It’s the only logical way to get him in my custody. Who the hell are you? 2 Ten visits in, I set my plan in motion. Carl is still adamant I’m not his daughter, but he’s remembering my name now, at least the pseudonym I gave him. I casually suggest that we take a little vacation. A couple of weeks, I promise him. A breather. We can get to know each other better. You can have a break from this claustrophobic prison. “If I go, will you let me use a pen?” he asks. “Mrs. T has banned me from pens. She figures I might stick one in somebody’s throat.” “And that would be a damn mess for me to clean up,” Mrs. T confirms from the doorway to the kitchen. Her “jiggling Polish behind,” as Carl calls it, always shows up silently and perfectly timed. But it was Mrs. T who took him in thirteen months ago. Hers was the only halfway house of old felons that would say yes to a possible serial killer with dementia after a Waco cop found him rambling the highway. The famous documentary and fine-art photographer Carl Louis Feldman, suspected of stalking young women and stealing them for years, said he couldn’t remember his own name. It took fingerprints and a sample of DNA to do that. A local hospital guessed a diagnosis of early onset dementia and sent him back out into the world. Because even if he was “damn-sure-fire a sick Ted Bundy with a camera and a Ford pickup truck,” as a prosecutor once pounded out to a Texas jury, the state just didn’t care anymore. He was declared not guilty in that missing girl case—the only one he was tried for, the only one with a bit of incriminating DNA evidence. Two days of deliberating, and the jury said he was good to go. And go he did, hiding out for years like a brown recluse in some dark corner while I patted my foot impatiently until he crawled out. Who knew I’d end up here—crammed so tightly on a sagging couch with my sister’s killer and a woman who knits imaginary things that we can feel each other’s heat. The wedding veil is missing today, but her fingers are flying in frantic rhythm like there’s a whip at her back. The other occupants of the house are scattered in the kitchen, the bedrooms, the bathrooms—away from the soundtrack of the TV, which starts the day at 6 a.m. The relentless, high-pitched buzz from deep inside its guts lives in my head for hours after I leave. Carl rips his eyes from the screen in front of us, a Discovery Channel special. We have just learned about a tarantula that can exist for two years without eating. Carl twists toward me, the bone of his knee purposely jutting into my thigh. I imagine that same knee holding Rachel down. I’m suddenly glad, for her sake, that the woman beside me is deaf and, for my sake, that her dangerously sharp needles are imaginary. Carl’s hand drifts up. Mrs. T is gone. He’s going to touch me. I’m going to let him. Whatever he wants. Whatever it takes. He slides the rough pads of his middle and index fingers lightly down my cheek while I stare ahead at the hairy spider on TV, now warring with a lizard. Carl traces my chin, my ear. He drifts to my neck. When he reaches the hollow place beside my windpipe, he presses his two fingers into my flesh harder than he needs to. “Bump, bump,” he says. “Bump, bump. That’s your carotid.” I nod, swallowing hard. I know intimately about the carotid artery from reading hundreds of medical examiner reports. Its three layers—the intima, media, and adventitia. How the two carotids in the neck carry ninety percent of the blood to the brain. The TV shows aren’t lying. A ruthless jab to one of them can cause death in bare minutes. Carl keeps his fingers glued to my throat even when there’s a rapid knock on the front door. Two shrill rings of the bell. I bend down for my purse so Carl is forced to pull his hand back. So I can catch my breath and smooth out the loathing and humiliation on my face that I hope he hasn’t seen. My fingers scramble in my purse. I hear the creak of floorboards, the swish of Mrs. T’s skirt, the noisy clanks as she opens the myriad latches on the front door. When I sit back up, the visitor is stepping over the threshold, a dark-haired teenager named Lolita with a rose tattoo etched on the delicate underside of her wrist. Lolita visits every Wednesday—the granddaughter of one of Mrs. T’s boarders. She has done a good job of trying to forget that her grandfather once set a house fire with six people inside. He’s docile now. Only out of prison because no one died. I’ve noticed that Lolita keeps her head down around Carl. Today is no exception. As usual, she’s wearing a scarf stamped with pink and white snails. One time, the scarf was tied around her ponytail, another, scrunched through her belt loops. Today it dangles loosely around her neck. I overheard her tell Mrs. T that the scarf was a Christmas gift from her grandfather. She wears it to help him remember who she is. Mrs. T and Lolita drift out of the room, chattering, without speaking to us. I hand Carl the pen from my purse, a favorite one with the ink that glides like blue oil. “As requested,” I say. “So you will come?” I sound a little more pleading and hopeful than I’d like. Maybe more like a daughter. Maybe that’s good. He jams the pen in the waist of his jeans, baring the intimate flash of black hair below his belly button. My heartbeat punches against my throat, harder even than when he pressed his fingers there.

1. The truth about Carl and the protagonist behind the wheel unfolds with every mile. Did you find yourself rooting for one or the other—or both?

There are some fiendishly clever mysteries coming your way this month! Pack one of these exciting new novels in your carryon and you’ll be rejoicing at the prospect of an extra long layover…

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Podcast Review

Paper Ghosts: A Decade-Long Search for Justice

I n Paper Ghosts , a new true crime podcast from iHeartRadio, author and investigative journalist M. William Phelps works to solve the abductions and probable murders of four young women and girls.

Set mostly around the northern Connecticut towns of Tolland and Vernon, the podcast looks back at a roughly seven year period, from 1968 to 1975. Paper Ghosts also shares the story of how these communities were rocked by the four disappearances. Each episode reveals a little more information or brings in a new voice. Over time, a series of connections and patterns between the crimes begins to emerge.

Yet, because close to fifty years has elapsed since the crimes, as cases, these are very cold. Many possible witnesses and possible suspects have passed away, or just don’t want to go dredging through the past. Phelps digs deeply into old police records, the personal files of relatives of the victims, and in some cases digs literally, on private property. The podcast is the result of a decade’s worth of research and it shows in terms of the level of detail. Phelps has meticulously tracked down sources, cultivated relationships, and documented it all.

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In addition to picking apart the threads of these murders, Paper Ghosts is also a window into how much has changed since the 1970s, and also how much has stayed the same. Attitudes about domestic violence, and the way that both authorities and individuals perceive and respond to it, has transformed from being a “family matter” to one of public health. Phelps explores this shift, and how it is evidenced in other areas of police work. Technology, too, has given detectives a much larger toolset. What hasn’t changed much over half a century is that when a woman or a girl is murdered, it’s usually by someone who knows her. It’s chilling to hear one of Phelps’ law enforcement sources say that if he simply arrested the boyfriend or the husband every time he found a dead women, he’d have “a pretty great batting average.”

The passion Phelps has for the subject material comes through in the podcast; he’s a true crime writer by trade, but he has also come to personally know many of the people who have been touched by this particular series of crimes, and he is local to the area. As the series goes along, it does become slightly jarring that he refers to all of these victims as “missing girls.” One was a twenty-year-old mother of three. Young, yes, but not a “girl.” That said, as a narrative, Paper Ghosts is in no way dismissive of any of the victims — the phrase is more of a catchall that becomes slightly inaccurate the more the story unwinds.

That Phelps is the author of over twenty books is highly apparent in the way this podcast is structured. The listening experience feels in some ways more like reading an audiobook. The writing is excellent, and he handles interviews expertly. Often in podcasts, the host will record a conversation with a subject, play the audio, and then essentially repeat what the subject said. Phelps avoids this. Rather, he uses the first-person accounts in the same way an author would, to propel the story along, and the interviews have a strong sense of narrative urgency. It also has the effect of truly giving voice to the people left behind, who have been waiting for years to find out what happened to their sisters, daughters, and best friends.

Overall, Paper Ghosts is excellently produced, with compelling cliffhanger endings between episodes and thoughtful lines of questioning that make listeners trust the direction of the investigation, and it is presented with a sense of empathy that mitigates against the shock value that permeates some true crime accounts. The story itself is a heartbreaking tale of loss paired with a search for if not justice, at least closure.

Wendy J. Fox is the author of the collection  The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories , the novels  The Pull of It  and  If the Ice Had Held , and the forthcoming collection What If We Were Somewhere Else . Her work has appeared in  The Rumpus ,  Buzzfeed , and  Self , as well as in literary magazines including  Washington Square ,  Euphony , and  Painted Bride Quarterly .

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Paper Ghosts: A Novel of Suspense Paperback – May 7, 2019

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• Print length 368 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Ballantine Books
• Publication date May 7, 2019
• Dimensions 5.28 x 0.82 x 7.92 inches
• ISBN-10 0804178046
• ISBN-13 978-0804178044
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (May 7, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0804178046
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0804178044
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.6 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.28 x 0.82 x 7.92 inches
• #3,070 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
• #7,269 in Psychological Thrillers (Books)
• #20,082 in Suspense Thrillers

About the authors

Julia heaberlin.

Julia Heaberlin is the internationally bestselling writer of six thrillers, including WE ARE ALL THE SAME IN THE DARK, a #1 Audible bestseller and the winner of Best Novel by the Writers’ League of Texas. In her latest thriller, NIGHT WILL FIND YOU, an astrophysicist and reluctant psychic explores the controversial, conspiracy-laden case of a lost girl. Heaberlin first broke out with the psychologically dark BLACK-EYED SUSANS, which examines the Texas death penalty and the use of high-tech DNA to identify old bones. SUSANS was published in more than fifteen countries and a top five Times of London bestseller. Heaberlin followed that with the creepy Texas road trip, PAPER GHOSTS, a finalist for Best Hardcover Novel by the International Thriller Writers Awards that has also been optioned for television. Earlier in her career, Heaberlin was an award-winning editor at newspapers that include the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Detroit News, and The Dallas Morning News. She is currently at work on her seventh thriller and lives in Texas, where all her novels are set. She is published by Flatiron Books and represented by Kim Witherspoon at Inkwell Management.

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