Ghost Talkers [2017, PDF/EPUB, ENG]

by Mary Robinette Kowal

(514 ratings)
Book cover

“Powerful, laden with emotion, and smartly written.” ―Brandon Sanderson, author of Mistborn and The Way of Kings

Ghost Talkers is a brilliant historical fantasy novel from acclaimed author Mary Robinette Kowal featuring the mysterious spirit corps and their heroic work in World War I.

Ginger Stuyvesant, an American heiress living in London during World War I, is engaged to Captain Benjamin Harford, an intelligence officer. Ginger is a medium for the Spirit Corps, a special Spiritualist force.

Each soldier heading for the front is conditioned to report to the mediums of the Spirit Corps when they die so the Corps can pass instant information about troop movements to military intelligence.

Ginger and her fellow mediums contribute a great deal to the war efforts, so long as they pass the information through appropriate channels. While Ben is away at the front, Ginger discovers the presence of a traitor. Without the presence of her fiancé to validate her findings, the top brass thinks she's just imagining things. Even worse, it is clear that the Spirit Corps is now being directly targeted by the German war effort. Left to her own devices, Ginger has to find out how the Germans are targeting the Spirit Corps and stop them. This is a difficult and dangerous task for a woman of that era, but this time both the spirit and the flesh are willing…

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Book details


  • Author : Mary Robinette Kowal
  • Publisher : Tor Trade; Reprint edition
  • Published : 08-07-2017
  • Language : English
  • Pages : 304
  • ISBN-10 : 0765378264
  • ISBN-13 : 978-0765378262
  • Reader Reviews : 514 (4.3)

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  • Status : available for FREE download
  • Downloads : 3548

About the Author


Mary Robinette Kowal


Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of the Lady Astronaut Universe and historical fantasy novels: The Glamourist Histories series and Ghost Talkers. She’s a member of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses and has received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, four Hugo awards, the RT Reviews award for Best Fantasy Novel, the Nebula, and Locus awards. Stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov’s, several Year’s Best anthologies and her collections Word Puppets and Scenting the Dark and Other Stories.

Her novel Calculating Stars is one of only eighteen novels to win the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards in a single year.

As a professional puppeteer and voice actor (SAG/AFTRA), Mary Robinette has performed for LazyTown (CBS), the Center for Puppetry Arts, Jim Henson Pictures, and founded Other Hand Productions. Her designs have garnered two UNIMA-USA Citations of Excellence, the highest award an American puppeteer can achieve. She records fiction for authors such as Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi.

Mary Robinette lives in Nashville with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters. Visit maryrobinettekowal.com.

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Reader Reviews

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Levi Jacobs
Haunted Without Haunting
Reviewed in the United States on 10-09-2016
If you’re looking for a book with great ideas, lots of dramatic tension, and believable magic set in rich historical context, Ghost Talkers is your book. Though honestly, any of Mary Robinette Kowal’s novels fit that description—she is the queen of historical fantasy. But does the Hugo-Award winner deliver in this new standalone? Yes and no—let’s start with the yeses.

Yes on concept. As always, Kowal’s basic idea for the book is brilliant: spirit mediums are real, working on the front lines of the Allied army in World War One to gather intelligence from newly departed soldiers. It’s haunting work, but young American volunteer medium Ginger Stuyvesant is dedicated to giving the Allies an edge—plus staying close to her British fiancée. But when he shows up at work, a murdered spirit… then the drama begins. Unable to leave because of the danger Ginger is in (he’s murdered as part of a larger plot to discover the spirit mediums’s location) and his need to find a killer, Ginger must work with him to unravel the plot and find the killer—even as they deal with the impossibility of their relationship, and fiancée Ben’s spirit gradually loses coherence. Needless to say, that emotional backdrop plus the rich (and unfamiliar, and well-researched) setting of WWI France supporting a thriller-paced murder mystery with feminist underpinnings—it makes for a great read. Yes on drama, and yes on the fun/educational/surprise-factor only historical fiction can deliver.

And yes on magic! Based again on research into the time, MRK’s spirit mediumship fits the story and the historical context like a glove: reading auras, explaining death and dying, gaining her character insight into another world of emotional auras and wandering ghosts and a dear unraveling fiancée—it’s great.

So what didn’t work as well? Of course this is just one reader reaction, but the story itself felt mechanical. Once the dead body is in place, it becomes.... Read the full review (and lots of other haunting material!) at topnewfantasy.com
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J
Kindle Customer
it feels episodic - or like a season finale
Reviewed in the United States on 08-17-2016
I'm still gathering my thoughts after reading this book. It's incredibly well-done, and well researched, but it reads so fast, it feels episodic - or like a season finale. The main duo and their respective circles are so cunningly crafted, they remind me of people I know.

This is not just a white rich-girl book: the fact that Ginger is an 'heiress' is scarcely relevant. I don't even think it was referenced off the back cover. There are many cockney, dark-skinned, and Indian characters that turn out to be more critical than the vast majority of white characters. The racism, sexism, and classicism rampant at the time is repeatedly challenged and smacked down as stupid - which is refreshing, if a bit revisionist.

I know I need a prequel to this - there's so much rich history of the discovery and development of the Spirit Corps that I need to know about - I agree with the author, if it had been shoehorned into this story, it would have ruined the flow - stories of Helen and how Lady Edith Penfold became the face of the Spirit Corps to the higher ranks. But more, I need to know how the bedrock firm relationship of Ginger and Ben developed. How they met and began working together - why his parents allowed them both to be engaged and at the front and not married.

So much of this is the story of Ginger and Ben at the front in 1916; this story stands alone, and didn't leave too many threads outstanding. Consequently, I'm not certain what the next tale can be. More war tales from the spirit corps? Surviving the aftermath, and the age of disillusionment? In any case, I will always desire sequels, and Ms. Kowal is a gifted enough author to make the next Tales from the Spirit Corps to be just as intriguing as this.
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Ken Fagan
One of the most innovative Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Alternate Historical Fict novels I've read in a long time.
Reviewed in the United States on 08-13-2022
Ms. Kowal's ability to weave heartfelt humanity into suspenseful alternate history narrative literally keeps me up waaay past my bedtime. This reads like a so many genres at once, it's hard to classify. So, I'll just say it's so good be very careful about how late you start your nightly reading sessions..
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