Search
Log in
  • Home

  • Categories

  • Audiobooks

  • E-books

  • Magazines

  • For kids

  • Top lists

  • Help

  • Download app

  • Use campaign code

  • Redeem gift card

  • Try free now
  • Log in
  • Language

    🇸🇪 Sverige

    • SE
    • EN

    🇧🇪 Belgique

    • FR
    • EN

    🇩🇰 Danmark

    • DK
    • EN

    🇩🇪 Deutschland

    • DE
    • EN

    🇪🇸 España

    • ES
    • EN

    🇫🇷 France

    • FR
    • EN

    🇳🇱 Nederland

    • NL
    • EN

    🇳🇴 Norge

    • NO
    • EN

    🇦🇹 Österreich

    • AT
    • EN

    🇨🇭 Schweiz

    • DE
    • EN

    🇫🇮 Suomi

    • FI
    • EN
  1. Books
  2. Historic and folklore novels
  3. Historic novels

Read and listen for free for 14 days!

Cancel anytime

Try free now
3.6(7)

These Ghosts are Family : A Novel

PEN/Hemingway Award For Debut Novel Finalist

Shortlisted for the 2020 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

A “rich, ambitious debut novel” (The New York Times Book Review) that reveals the ways in which a Jamaican family forms and fractures over generations, in the tradition of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.

Stanford Solomon’s shocking, thirty-year-old secret is about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford has done something no one could ever imagine. He is a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley.

And now, nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley, a home health aide who has unwittingly shown up for her first day of work to tend to the father she thought was dead.

These Ghosts Are Family revolves around the consequences of Abel’s decision and tells the story of the Paisley family from colonial Jamaica to present-day Harlem. There is Vera, whose widowhood forced her into the role of a single mother. There are two daughters and a granddaughter who have never known they are related. And there are others, like the houseboy who loved Vera, whose lives might have taken different courses if not for Abel Paisley’s actions.

This “rich and layered story” (Kirkus Reviews) explores the ways each character wrestles with their ghosts and struggles to forge independent identities outside of the family and their trauma. The result is a “beguiling…vividly drawn, and compelling” (BookPage, starred review) portrait of a family and individuals caught in the sweep of history, slavery, migration, and the more personal dramas of infidelity, lost love, and regret.


Author:

  • Maisy Card

Format:

  • Audiobook

Duration:

  • 9 h 55 min

Language:

English

Categories:

  • Historic and folklore novels
  • Historic novels

More by Maisy Card

Skip the list
  1. These Ghosts Are Family : A Novel

    Maisy Card

    book

Others have also read

Skip the list
  1. The Boarding House (Unabridged)

    James Joyce

    audiobook
  2. The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction : 50 North American Stories Since 1970

    Michael Martone

    book
  3. Dishing Up Deceit

    Emmie Lyn

    audiobook
  4. Rebecca, Not Becky : A Novel

    Christine Platt, Catherine Wigginton Greene

    audiobook
  5. Castles from Cobwebs

    J.A. Mensah

    audiobook
  6. Adequate Yearly Progress : A Novel

    Roxanna Elden

    audiobookbook
  7. The Book of Science and Antiquities: A Novel

    Thomas Keneally

    audiobook
  8. The End of Cuthbert Close

    Cassie Hamer

    audiobook
  9. God Spare the Girls : A Novel

    Kelsey McKinney

    audiobook
  10. The Purest Love for the Coldest Thug 2

    Miss Jenesequa

    audiobook
  11. Russian Winter : A Novel

    Daphne Kalotay

    audiobook
  12. Laura & Emma

    Kate Greathead

    audiobookbook

  • 2 books

    Maisy Card

    Maisy Card holds an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College and is a public librarian. Her writing has appeared in Lenny Letter, School Library Journal, Agni, Sycamore Review, Liars’ League NYC, and Ampersand Review. Maisy was born in St. Catherine, Jamaica, but was raised in Queens, New York. Maisy earned an MLIS from Rutgers University and a BA in English and American Studies from Wesleyan University. She is the author of These Ghosts Are Family.

    Read more

Help and contact


About us

  • Our story
  • Career
  • Press
  • Accessibility
  • Partner with us
  • Investor relations
  • Instagram
  • Facebook

Explore

  • Categories
  • Audiobooks
  • E-books
  • Magazines
  • For kids
  • Top lists

Popular categories

  • Crime
  • Biographies and reportage
  • Fiction
  • Feel-good and romance
  • Personal development
  • Children's books
  • True stories
  • Sleep and relaxation

Nextory

Copyright © 2025 Nextory AB

Privacy Policy · Terms ·
Excellent4.3 out of 5