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Published May 2015
288 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Has the world's hottest pop star been kidnapped, brainwashed, or simply gone into hiding? The answer lies in the abandoned subway stations of Chicago...
One minute insanely famous pop singer Molly Metropolis is on her way to a major performance in Chicago, and the next, she's gone, her cell phone found abandoned. Has she been kidnapped? Gone into hiding?
Molly's personal assistant and a journalist who'd been writing about Molly launch a desperate search to find her using her songs and journal as a guide.
It leads them to a map of half-completed train lines underneath Chicago, which in turn leads them to the secret, subterranean headquarters of an obscure intellectual sect - and the realization that they've gone too far to turn back. And if a superstar can disappear without a trace ... what can happen to these young women?
Suspenseful and wildly original, The Ghost Network is a novel about larger-than-life fantasies - of transportation, love, sex, pop music, amateur detective work, and personal reinvention. Debut novelist Catie Disabato bursts on the scene with an ingeniously plotted, witty, haunting mystery.
"Starred Review. {S]imultaneously breathlessly exhilarating and beautifully haunted" - Publishers Weekly
"Artistic ambition, cultural critique, and a revolutionary philosophy drive the mysteries underlying this complex, charismatic novel." - Kirkus
"Brilliant, daring, and masterful ... Impossible to put down." - Edan Lepucki, New York Times bestselling author of California
"A giddy mashup of pop culture, genre-tropes, conspiracy theories and dystopian fantasy...Catie Disabato is a true original, and a young writer to watch." - Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply
"As close as we'll ever get to Borges filtering Lady Gaga, Calvino analyzing Miley Cyrus, or Cortazaar obsessing over FKA Twigs, the supremely talented Disabato gives us a synthwave pop illuminati fantasy that will make your ears ring." - Maxwell Neely-Cohen, author of Echo of the Boom
"Catie Disabato's prose is as clean as a whistle and as sharp as a tack, and her imagination is wondrous. A smart and exciting debut that plays by its own rules." - Ivy Pochoda, author of Visitation Street
"Spectacularly original. Meta, ingenious, and totally fun." - Kate Durbin, author of E! Entertainment
This information about The Ghost Network was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Catie Disabato is a columnist for Full Stop. She's written criticism and commentary for This Recording, The Millions, and The Rumpus, and her short fiction was recently featured on Joyland. After growing up in Chicago and graduating from Oberlin College, she now lives in L.A. and works in public relations.
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