I forget what drew me to check out Seanan McGuire's Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day, but it wound up being pretty good for being a particularly slim volume.
So, the story concerns Jenna, who died in the 70's, not long after her sister Patty died. As a ghost, Jenna ran off to New York City from Mill Hollow, Kentucky, to try to find her sister. Now in the modern age, Jenna works as both a barista and a suicide prevention councilor on a phone line. She has a rent controlled apartment owned by a long dead Jewish landlady and a collection of elderly cats.
Ghosts in this setting have the ability to give and take time. The terminology gets a bit confusing, but essentially amounts to say, taking a few years off of one person making them younger then giving them to another person, making them older. When a ghost starts approaching the age they should have died at, a red flag appears to them and they have the choice of stealing time or going on to what awaits. (Ghosts are just as clueless about the afterlife as the living.)
Jenna tends to give youth in increments of how much time she gave to people on the suicide line. (Like a waitress whom she takes 47 minutes from after keeping a caller on the line for 47 minutes.)
Jenna tends to hang out at a cafeteria after work, which is how she knows Brenda, a Corn Witch; and Sophie, a Rat Witch.
Eventually this leads to the realization that Jenna and her landlady are the only two ghosts left in New York City, and her one ghost friend Danny (who like me if I were a ghost in New York City, works at Midtown comics) has fled.
This leads to a road trip to find out what's going on, and an exploration of some of the other ghost myths floating around. (Mainly one about covering mirrors to keep the dead from getting trapped when they die.)
It's really a bittersweet read, with the theme being one of homecoming. It may be short, but it packs a mean left hook.
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