The Ghost Variations by Kevin Brockmeier

Public Media Market is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. When you shop using our links, we earn a small commission. It’s a great way to support public media at no extra cost to you!
BUY Amazon | Bookshop
Featured on The Thread: Ask a bookseller recommends very short stories — all about ghosts
A spirit who is fated to spend eternity reliving the exact moment she lost her chance at love, ghostly trees that haunt the occupant of a wooden house, specters that snatch anyone who steps into the shadows, and parakeets that serve as mouthpieces for the dead: these are just a few of the characters in this extraordinary compendium of one hundred ghost stories. Kevin Brockmeier’s fiction has always explored the space between the fantastical and the everyday with profundity and poignancy. As in his previous books, The Ghost Variations discovers new ways of looking at who we are and what matters to us, exploring how mysterious, sad, strange, and comical it is to be alive—or, as it happens, not to be.