Ghost Talkers

Spiritualists and ghosts determine the success of military maneuvers during World War I in Mary Robinette Kowal's Ghost Talkers. Combining otherworldly elements with history, Kowal (Shades of Milk and Honey) imagines the Allied Powers depending on their dead to help them fight against the Central Powers. With greater numbers and a better arsenal, the Germans have run Allied forces to the end of their endurance. Only a small group of spiritualists, known as the Spirit Corps, gives them a slight advantage. The Spirit Corps reaches beyond the veil of life and interviews the ghosts of dead soldiers. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini uncover the tricks behind purported magic and supernatural occurrences, Kowal reveals that their goal is to undermine the belief in spiritualism in order to protect the Spirit Corps from being discovered.

Ginger Stuyvesant is one of the group's mediums. She disengages her soul from her body to talk with the ghosts of soldiers killed in action. But when someone leaks the existence of the Spirit Corps, Ginger and her group become the focus of attacks. Ginger finds evidence of a traitor, but her supervisors dismiss her as having imagined what she saw. The only one who believes her is a ghost struggling to keep from becoming a poltergeist, and with his help, Ginger abandons her post for the field in search of the traitor. In this gripping story, Kowal (Shades of Milk and Honey) creates a vivid world with elements of suspense that will keep readers guessing as to who can be trusted and who has divulged the truth about the Spirit Corps. --Justus Joseph, bookseller at Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, Wash.

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