Tea for Two Ghosts

When Mara Calloway inherits her late Aunt Bess's cluttered tea shop on a quiet Bristol side street, she expects damp walls, outstanding debts, and a very strong smell of bergamot. She does not expect Edwin Marsh -- courteous, bewildered, and thoroughly dead since 1924 -- quietly polishing a counter that no longer needs polishing. Edwin has haunted the Twice-Steeped Tea Room for over a century, visible only to whoever brews the shop's old blended teas with the right intention and an unhurried hand. Mara, stubborn and grieving in equal measure, turns out to have exactly the right touch. As she learns the shop's peculiar rules -- which blends call him into focus, which hours are his, what he is still waiting for -- they settle into a careful, warm, impossible friendship. And then, slowly, into something that has no good name but feels very much like falling.