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Songs for Ghosts

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Songs for Ghosts

By: Clara Kumagai
Narrated by: Kenichiro Thomson, Susan Momoko-Hingley
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About this listen

From Catfish Rolling's Clara Kumagai, a second novel full of longing, love and heartbreak, inspired by Puccini's Madame Butterfly.

Turn the page, strike a chord.

There are restless ghosts to be appeased...

When Japanese-American teenager, Adam, discovers a diary in his attic, he is enthralled by its account of a young Japanese woman’s life. A hundred years separate them yet she, like Adam, is caught between cultures, relationships and heartbreak.

She also writes of the ghosts that have begun to seek her out, which Adam dismisses as fantasy – until he too, begins to be haunted. It leads him to Nagasaki, trying to solve the mystery of the diary, and his own identity.

And the ghosts gather...

©2025 Clara Kumagai (P)2025 Head of Zeus
Historical Fiction Horror Literary Fiction

Critic Reviews

'With all the deftness of a master biwa player, Kumagai skillfully strings together the lives of its characters both past and present. Hauntingly tender and full of warmth, Songs for Ghosts is a book that will stay with you long after the last page.' (Ann Sei Lin, author of the Rebel Skies trilogy)

'With deft grace, Clara Kumagai has taken a strained and challenging song and made it her own... A contemporary ghost story that explores ideas of love and voice with sympathy for the imperfect and a kaidan's atmospheric strangeness, you will enjoy this if you like Madame Butterfly, and you will enjoy this if you don't.' (Mina Ikemoto Ghosh, author of Hyo the Hellmaker)

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