Ghost Month: A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick

Full of wit, heart and charm, Ghost Month asks a timeless do we only value life when we are reminded that it will end?

Perhaps you've already noticed little things, strange details. A shadow not attached to anything. A face in a window which might be a trick of the light. They come at dusk. Today.

Every September, the spirits of the dead return before vanishing four weeks later in a puff of green ash.

The haunting has become a holiday - part Christmas, part Halloween. The ghosts aren't real in any way that can hurt you, but their presence unearths an annual reckoning with the past. It's hard to tell the silent spectres from ashen they linger on train platforms, they crowd buses, they take up space on your sofa. The proper term these days is 'people without pulses'.

This year, four strangers prepare for a visit from their dearly departed. The season forces them to confront all the things that haunt them, not just their dead. As suppressed truths emerge from the shadows, each of them will end Ghost Month changed in ways they never imagined. Happy Haunting.