Joplin's Ghost

By: Tananarive Due

Narrated by: Lizan Mitchell

From the award-winning writer of The Good House, The Living Blood, and more, Joplin's Ghost is a chilling tale of a star-in-the-making whose life goes haywire as she is haunted by the ghost of a long-dead music legend.

When Phoenix Smalls was ten, she nearly died at her parents' jazz club when she was crushed by a turn-of-the-century piano. Now twenty-four, Phoenix is launching a career as an R & B singer. She's living the life young artists envy and seems destined for fame and fortune. But a chance visit to a historical site in St. Louis ignites a series of bizarre, erotic encounters with a spirit who may be the King of Ragtime, Scott Joplin.

The music of Scott Joplin is strange enough to the ears of the hip-hop generation, but the idea that these antique sounds are being channeled by the protegee of rap superstar G-Ronn is nothing short of ludicrous. With growing violence in G-Ronn's inner circle and a ghost bent on living forever through her, Phoenix's life suddenly hangs in the balance," writes Tananarive Due.

Can the power of her own inner song and the love of a music writer who believes in her give Phoenix the strength to fight to live out her own future? Or will she be trapped forever in Scott Joplin's doomed, tragic past?

Critic reviews

"The story is also a vehicle for Due's admirable illustration of the musician's dilemma: how to be true to a gift in the face of pressure to create what will sell. Authors face such dilemmas as well; fortunately, Due shows herself true to her own powerful gift." (Publishers Weekly)

"Haunting." (The Washington Post's Book World)

Could have been better

The premise of the story was interesting, but it could have used better editing to make the story build faster.

The payoff is worth it

I had a wildly uneven experience with this book. It has some of the same problems that I have with most novels that try to tell two interconnected stories, one historical, one contemporary. The historical story was easy to fall into, but I kept losing interest during the contemporary timeline. That might be all me, rather than the book, as I have very little interest in 1990's pop music or the lives of fictional 90's pop stars. I was also a little uncomfortable with (the mercifully few) explicit sex scenes and some dubious consent issues. The payoff toward the end was worth persevering for, though, and the prose lifted the story a little.

I think it was the audio performance by Lizan Mitchell that really made this book for me - her pace, her voices, her emotion, even the way she changed the whole persona of the narrator based on who's POV is being revealed - were all outstanding.

The ability to pull readers inside story

I loved it all I hope she keeps writing forever!!! I’m a fan for life at this point lovely

Amazing Story!

I was enthralled with this book. Plot was 10 out of 10 for me. I recommend this book.

Good Book-Didn't like the narrator

I realize that the characters in this book are African American and so is the narrator, but does she have to make all white people sound like idiots? Her voices for characters didn't match their description. Her accent for the cousin Gloria was terrible and made her sound like a cartoon character not a young jewish woman. I think the narration took away from the story line...and I love Tananarive Due Books.