Paper Ghosts

A Texas map marked with three red dots like drops of blood. A serial killer who claims to have dementia. A mysterious young woman who wants answers. What could go wrong?

"A rich hybrid work that's at once...a murder mystery, a road novel, a pair of psychological case studies and a meditation on photography." [The Sunday Times (UK), Thriller of the Month]

An obsessive young woman has been waiting half her life - since she was 12 years old - for this moment. She has planned. Researched. Trained. Imagined every scenario. Now she is almost certain the man who kidnapped and murdered her sister sits in the passenger seat beside her.

Carl Louis Feldman is a documentary photographer who may or may not have dementia - and may or may not be a serial killer. The young woman claims to be his long-lost daughter. He doesn't believe her. He claims no memory of murdering girls across Texas, in a string of places where he shot eerie pictures. She doesn't believe him.

Determined to find the truth, she lures him out of a halfway house and proposes a dangerous idea: a 10-day road trip, just the two of them, to examine cold cases linked to his haunting photographs.

Is he a liar or a broken old man? Is he a pathological con artist? Or is she? In Paper Ghosts, Julia Heaberlin once again swerves the serial killer genre in a new direction. You won't see the final, terrifying twist spinning your way until the very last mile.

"You'll enjoy the journey and all its macabre side trips. You'll love the travel commentary written in Heaberlin's lean, muscular prose.... Signposts along the way warn of angst, secrets and deadly plot twists, but you'll never see what's coming. You'll step out of this fictional vehicle feeling like you've been T-boned by an 18-wheeler." (The Washington Post)

Genre: Mystery    

"Paper Ghosts is the spellbinding, brilliantly original story of a young woman desperate to find her missing sister and the man who she suspects knows the truth, joined together on a perilous journey as elusive and mysterious as the paper ghosts that lure them. Julia Heaberlin’s love for Texas spills across every page." - Carla Buckley

"A stunner: a creepy, complicated thriller that crawls under your skin from the outset and burrows deeper with every page; the kind of ‘there’s no way this is going to end well’ story in which you know that what the character is doing is a very, very bad idea, but you can’t look away. It’s a chilling, nuanced, just-one-more-page novel from a master of psychological suspense. Highly recommended!" - Karen Dionne

"An exceptional read, with a deftly woven plot—a book to devour in one sitting. This is breathless storytelling at its very best, with a deeply satisfying ending that will give book groups—and all your friends, when you recommend it—much to discuss." - Elizabeth Haynes

"With prose as sharp and flinty as the book’s protagonist, Paper Ghosts takes a deep dive into the murky well of moral ambiguity, as one woman’s obsession with her missing sister collides with a serial killer’s dementia over the course of a thrill-packed road trip deep into the heart of Texas. This novel brilliantly asks you to question everything you see (and don’t see) around you." - Nina Sadowsky

"Engrossing, tense, and tightly written, with a luminous sense of place." - Emily Winslow