T. M. Wright (Author)

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, T. M. Wright earned praise from critics for a series of ghost novels about isolated houses in upstate New York. A Manhattan Ghost Story, first published in 1984, moved the action to New York City. And the tale is not about a single building, but about an all-pervasive layer of reality in which the shades of the living mark their days in a listless state, until finally they fall apart. A commercial photographer gets slowly pulled, while still living, over to the "other side"--a plight that leads to a profoundly unsettling and surreal chain of events. "And if you get stuck in that other city, that other Manhattan, you find yourself getting awfully desperate and mean-spirited, the way some people are affected by too much heat or the crying of small children."

Wright's ghosts are evocatively described, with their awkward movements and stares of "quiet, studied indifference." But be forewarned that A Manhattan Ghost Story, while justly celebrated, has a couple of minor flaws: a weak love story and slipshod editing that didn't catch place names that change partway through.