Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day

November 7, 2016
Prolific Hugo-winner and bestseller McGuire (Once Broken Faith) displays her typical mix of endearing characters inside a world constructed with thoughtfully deployed speculative elements in this standalone meditation on ghosts and time. After accidentally dying in the wake of her big sister’s suicide, native Kentuckian Jenna decides that she must earn the right to pass on. Working at a Manhattan suicide prevention hotline and becoming a regular at a quirky diner that is the haunt of ghosts and witches, Jenna exists in the world without feeling like she has a life. But when the ghosts of New York, many of whom are her friends and acquaintances, begin to disappear, she must brazenly overcome her fear of witches and reluctance to form attachments in order to defend the home she left and the one she found only after she died. This tightly paced adventure will win hearts with a charming protagonist and a well-earned ending.

January 1, 2017

When Patty committed suicide in 1972, her little sister Jenna blamed herself for not being there for Patty. When, after her sister's funeral, Jenna ends up dead--she condemns herself for that, too. Now in 2015, Jenna must earn back the years she lost until the time her death should have happened. Working for a suicide hotline seems the best way for a ghost to earn her too brief life back. However, now the phantoms in New York are disappearing, and not because they have earned their lost time. What is happening to them is worse than death, and Jenna may be the only one who can stop it. VERDICT McGuire's novella (Every Heart a Doorway) weaves a touching paranormal tale of lifetimes lived and cut short, challenging the usual tropes of ghosts and magic.--KC

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