Review of the Day: Ghost Summer by Tananarive Due

Ghost Summer is a collection of 14 short stories and one novella and is my first introduction to the work of Tananarive Due. 

To give an idea of the flavor of the book, I would like to talk about the first story, “The Lake.” The story is one of several set in the fictional small town of Gracetown, Florida. The story starts with a sentence from an internal memo:

The new English teacher at Gracetown Prep was chosen with the greatest care, highly recommended by [her previous employer]. No history of irregular behavior presaged the summer’s unthinkable events (p. 13).

So we know to expect some sort of horrible tragedy from Abbie LaFleur, the new teacher, but we do not know what it might be. The story contains a number of red herrings or false clues that help to build suspense such as the warning that “one must never, ever go swimming in Gracetown’s lakes during the summer”  The narrator goes on to say “In retrospect, she was foolish. But in all fairness, how could she have known” (p. 15).

Abbie lives in an old house that needs a lot of work and recruits one of her students, Derek, to do quite a bit of home repair for her. But as the narrator says,

“A female teacher could not be too careful about which students she invited to her home. Locker-room exaggerations held grave consequences that could literally steal years from a young woman’s life. Abbie had seen it before; entire careers up in flames. But this Derek …” (p. 19).

I will not say more about how the story concludes other than to say that I was surprised.

I thought Ghost Summer — the entire book, not just the story “The Lake” — was engaging and thoughtful and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

kindle and Audible audiobook. 326 pgs. 7 September 2025.