Ghost Lover: Stories

by Lisa Taddeo, Gail Shalan (Read by), Aida Reluzco (Read by), Erin deWard (Read by), Alana Kerr Collins (Read by)

Overview

From Lisa Taddeo, #1 New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of Three Women and “our most eloquent and faithful chronicler of human desire” (Esquire), Ghost Lover is an electrifying collection of fearless and ferocious short stories.

Behind anonymous screens, an army of cool and beautiful girls manage the dating service Ghost Lover, a forwarding system for text messages that promises to spare you the anguish of trying to stay composed while communicating with your crush. At a star-studded political fundraiser in a Los Angeles mansion, a trio of women compete to win the heart of the slick guest of honor. In a tense hospital waiting room, an inseparable pair of hard-partying friends crash into life’s responsibilities, but the magic of their glory days comes alive again at the moment they least expect it.

In these nine riveting stories—which include two Pushcart Prize winners and a finalist for the National Magazine Award—Lisa Taddeo brings to life the fever of obsession, the blindness of love, and the mania of grief. Featuring Taddeo’s arresting prose that continues to thrill her legions of fans, Ghost Lover dares you to look away.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781797141589
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Audio
Publication date:	06/14/2022
Sales rank:	1,094,761
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 5.60(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Lisa Taddeo is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Three Women and Animal. She has contributed to The New York Times, New York magazine, Esquire, Elle, Glamour, and many other publications. Her nonfiction has been included in the anthologies Best American Political Writing and Best American Sports Writing, and her short stories have won two Pushcart Prizes. She lives with her husband and daughter in New England.

Gail Shalan is a storyteller based in New York City. She has narrated books for Tantor, HighBridge, Blackstone, Chatterbox Audio with Audible UK, Spoken Realms, and more. She is also a narrator and producer on The StoryLight Podcast (available wherever you listen to podcasts). She holds an MFA in acting from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and has worked in both the US and UK in theater, film, and voice-over. Gail is also a puppeteer and one half of the International folk duo The Strange Bedfellows.

Aida Reluzco is a first-generation queer/LGBTQ+ American of Cuban and Filipino descent as well as a patron and contributor to the creative arts. Having received training in character studies, dialects, animation, and theater, she can usually be found enjoying life with her young family or reading.

Erin DeWard is an Audie Award-winning audiobook narrator and a classically trained stage actor. A longtime company member of The Strange Bedfellows, a New York-based Shakespeare company, she can also be found working with The Children's Shakespeare Theater. She has been working in the audio industry as a writer, a voice talent, an advocate for media accessibility for people who are blind, and a trainer for over a decade. She is a proud and grateful member of SAG/AFTRA.

Alana Kerr Collins is an Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator. She is also an actor, puppeteer, and singer who studied at the Impulse Company in London and earned a BA in drama and English at the University of Dublin, Trinity College.

Carlotta Brentan is a Meisner-trained actor and an award-winning audiobook narrator and producer who has worked in theater, film, commercials, and voiceover. A proud graduate of the three-year conservatory training program at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and of the Academy Theatre Company, she is originally from Italy but is currently based in New York.

Amanda Dolan is an experienced narrator and actor who received her master's degree from Brown University. In addition to narrating and acting, she works as a theater educator and musician. She is currently based in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

06/13/2022

Taddeo (Animal) critiques late-stage capitalism in her smart if sometimes cryptic debut collection. In the title story, a woman spurned by her lover becomes famous after she creates an app that allows female clients to woo potential lovers through beautiful online Cyranos. An older woman in “Forty-two” discovers that life is a numbers game when she learns her ex-lover is about to marry a younger woman. At a Malibu fund-raiser in “American Girl,” three women—a busty waitress, a once famous actor, and a talk show host named Cremora (after the cream substitute)—all vie for the attention of an up-and-coming California politician. In “Air Supply,” a hedonistic 18-year-old high school student and her best friend have their relationship tested during a portentous vacation in Puerto Rico. The stories are parts Didionesque anomie, American Psycho-ish brand invocation (Journelle, Dunhill, Barbuto), and a nonstop barrage of head-scratching non sequiturs masquerading as hip observations (“Pastrami is the polar opposite of Los Angeles,” according to the narrator of “Ghost Lover”). Though the affectless characters can start to wear a bit and begin to feel familiar, they reflect the author’s well-earned reputation for harnessing a vision of America populated by unfulfilled happiness seekers. This isn’t Taddeo’s best, but her fans will dig it. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Lisa Taddeo’s work is addictive. Once you start reading, you (legally) cannot stop. You’ll find yourself flipping through the crisp pages of her books late into the night, devouring the inner psyches of her haunting, irresistible female leads. . . .Taddeo’s prose speaks to the seedy core of us, capturing the experience of being a woman in a world that hates women, but simultaneously loves to fuck them, both literally and in the abstract.”
—Esquire

“Ghost Lover feels built to provoke—and it’s provocative. It pricks and prods you with its unrelenting focus on the many ways inhabiting a certain type of female body can ruin a life. . . . You might not know anyone like these women, but chances are that every woman you know holds at least a little bit of these women inside of them.”
—Los Angeles Times

“In Ghost Lover, Lisa Taddeo’s new collection of short stories, this world [of female desire] is illuminated, unpacked, and ultimately, understood. Across nine stories, Taddeo’s prose cuts like a knife—sharp, visceral, and dripping with ugly truths. She understands the grueling nature of the female psyche with an almost painful precision.”
—Nylon

“Raw and searching . . . Lisa Taddeo returns with more ruthless explorations of the feminine mystique in Ghost Lover.”
—Entertainment Weekly, “The Best New Books of June 2022”

“Readers of Taddeo’s nonfiction debut, Three Women (2019), and first novel, Animal (2021), will feel at home with the cast of women who haunt her first short-story collection: powerful, incisive, deep-feeling people who chase sex and love, often as they run from trauma and other hurts. . . . In Taddeo’s tantalizing stories . . . death seeps in through the cracks, but so does lightness, humor, and a kind of freedom.”
—Booklist

“I’ll read anything Lisa Taddeo ever writes. . . . The tales in Ghost Lover don’t disappoint. . . . These nine tales give us just the right dose of Lisa’s brilliant voice.”
—Zibby Owens, Good Morning America, “15 New Books to Add to Your Reading List for June"

“The nine stories in this collection, two of which have won Pushcarts, are dark and spooky explorations of anonymity, connection, shame, and passion. Reading it is an out-of-body experience.”
—LitHub

“Ragingly funny with pointed descriptions and keen, sometimes devastating, observations about women and love and sex.”
—Toronto Star

“Lisa Taddeo, a Pushcart Prize winner and the No. 1 New York Times best-selling author of Three Women, is back with an engrossing collection of short stories. . . . In Ghost Lover, Taddeo’s talent and knack for storytelling will certainly have readers itching for more than nine stories.”
—Shondaland

From the Publisher

★ 07/01/2022

Like her corrosive debut novel, Animal, Taddeo's stories portray women who have been shaped and often debased by assumptions framed largely by men, and she's ferociously observant of contemporary mores that angle us all toward power while crudely defining success in terms of sex and money, and failure as excess fat. In the title story, Ari has achieved unparalleled heights with a dating app but remains toxically, delusionally tied to a first lover who may or may not have violated her. In a story that pointedly opens, "The politician was beautiful and the talk show host was heavy," the host is delighted to catch the eye of California State Representative Phillip Coover—"brightly ambitious like all young, good looking men"—but he's using her to get ahead, just as he uses a has-been actress (in her forties?) to host a campaign event at her house. Elsewhere, another fortyish woman prefers young men but admits that for them "sleeping with an older woman is like having a vacation home," while an affecting story reveals a surprising connection between a seventyish man and a mysterious woman looking over a headstrong Miranda, who has abandoned her husband and child. VERDICT Frank, acidulous, surprisingly twisty, and blazing with desire that's often dangerous or misplaced; just the sort of uneasy reading that Taddeo always delivers.

Library Journal

An ensemble of talented narrators successfully convey the intense and complicated emotional situations presented in this collection of short stories. The stories are told from the points of view of various women of different ages, nationalities, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Narrators use accents when appropriate, adding authenticity to the listening experience. These women live interesting lives but not on their terms; they are still chasing their happy endings. This group of narrators manages to give these stories depth, along with understanding and compassion. Listeners will feel empathy, even when repulsive acts or thoughts surface. Each narrator has a distinct voice, heightening the intrigue and tension of these mesmerizing and thought-provoking works. A.M. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2022 - AudioFile

An ensemble of talented narrators successfully convey the intense and complicated emotional situations presented in this collection of short stories. The stories are told from the points of view of various women of different ages, nationalities, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Narrators use accents when appropriate, adding authenticity to the listening experience. These women live interesting lives but not on their terms; they are still chasing their happy endings. This group of narrators manages to give these stories depth, along with understanding and compassion. Listeners will feel empathy, even when repulsive acts or thoughts surface. Each narrator has a distinct voice, heightening the intrigue and tension of these mesmerizing and thought-provoking works. A.M. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2022 - AudioFile

2022-03-16
Nine stories take us into the world of people cooler and more attractive than we are.

Trendy bars, awards shows, political fundraisers, the right type of butter (Kerrygold), wedding table centerpiece (wildflowers in McCann's oatmeal tins), even the better side of the street (“the fine side of Bleecker, with the awnings and dachshunds”)—all the aspirational pleasures you could ever want are on offer in Taddeo's first story collection following her big nonfiction debut (Three Women, 2019) and a novel (Animal, 2021). People magazine may offer pictures of movie stars, but here we actually get to experience sex with one. In “Beautiful People,” a downtrodden prop master on a big movie set ends up, to her amazement, with the hottest man alive in her apartment, where he makes her veal osso buco and takes her to bed. “The first five hundred times it went in, it felt like the first time. There was no drug on earth, Jane knew, no man on earth, like this.” The dominant focus of the stories, however, is less relationships between men and women than the triangulation (or even quadrilateralization) of women around men. “American Girl” is about three women eyeing each other around the hot young senatorial candidate they all adore; “Maid Marian” is about the jealousy of an ex for her older lover’s wife. That former story contains a sentence that seems to crystallize the mood: “Noni was holding court with a few lesser-thans, in a corner with some Fernet and twinge.” Always the women are comparing bodies: “Fern was skinnier than Liv, but Liv was blond and tall and her breasts were enormous and thrillingly spaced.” “Back then, I think I had the better body. My butt and legs were more exciting.” This aggressively shallow approach is no accident—look what’s coming: “We would turn twenty-four and twenty-six and thirty. We would be leaving an acquaintance’s funeral—heroin, Cape Cod—and the dead boy’s father would turn to look at us, our rears. We've still got it, Sara would say. I laughed out loud, because I’d been thinking the very same thing.”

Like the Venetian candies in the last story, these intense little gems evaporate “like racy air.

Kirkus Reviews