It’s a story that literally gets better and better with every page (quite the feat indeed). It features the trope of kids being able to see ghosts that adults can’t, but then it adds a twist when the dad plays along and gets drawn into the otherworldly investigation. While “The Lake” (told from the POV of a predator) and “Summer” (child snatchers and the dark side of parenting) are both disturbing in their own ways, the titular novella “Ghost Summer” is the clear standout, and probably the best story in the whole collection. Gracetown contains three stories all set in the same town in Florida during the summer. The stories are grouped into four sections: Gracetown, The Knowing, Carriers, and Vanishings. Featuring an award-winning novella and fifteen stories-one of which has never been published before-Ghost Summer: Stories is sure to both haunt and delight.

In her debut collection of short fiction, Due takes us to Gracetown, a small Florida town that has both literal and figurative ghost into future scenarios that seem all too real and provides empathetic portraits of those whose lives are touched by Otherness. SUMMARY: Whether weaving family life and history into dark fiction or writing speculative Afrofuturism, American Book Award winner and bestselling author Tananarive Due’s work is both riveting and enlightening. By the end of our read-along we all came to essentially the same conclusion: this collection of stories is excellent and now we need to read everything else author Tananarive Due has ever written! I started reading Ghost Summer Stories because I was looking for more horror by black authors, and because it was being read by a number of people whose opinions I trust. “No one warned her about summers in Gracetown…”

Ghost summer stories by tananarive due