Winifred Rudge, a bemused writer struggling to get beyond the runaway success of her mass-market astrology book, travels to London to jump-start her new novel about a woman who is being haunted by the ghost of Jack the Ripper. Upon her arrival, she finds that her stepcousin and old friend John Comestor has disappeared, and a ghostly presence seems to have taken over his home. Is the spirit Winnie's great-great-grandfather, who, family legend claims, was Charles Dickens's childhood inspiration for Ebenezer Scrooge? Could it be the ghostly remains of Jack the Ripper? Or a phantasm derived from a more arcane and insidious origin? Winnie begins to investigate and finds herself the unwilling audience for a drama of specters and shades -- some from her family's peculiar history and some from her own unvanquished past.

In the spirit of A. S. Byatt's Possession, with dark echoing overtones of A Christmas Carol, Lost presents a rich fictional world that will enrapture its readers.

Critical Praise

"Gregory Maguire is a delightful storyteller with an absolutely unique imagination. Lost seems to me to be his best novel yet, which is saying something. A reader who hasn’t discovered his work is in for a treat and a revelation. I wish I thought like Gregory Maguire."
—Peter S. Beagle, author of Tamsin and A Dance for Emilia

"[A] deftly written, compulsively readable modern-day ghost story that easily elicits suspension of disbelief....Maguire's prose is both jaunty and scary; he knows how to mix spooky ingredients with contemporary situations....[R]eaders will be hooked."
—Publishers Weekly