A Fine and Private Place

Cover photograph and design by Ann Monn.

One of literature's most beautiful works about ghostly times and places... told with wit, charm, and a sense of individuality. – NY Times Book Review

For nineteen years, Jonathan Rebeck has hidden from the world within the confines of the Bronx's Yorkchester Cemetery, making an abandoned mausoleum his secret home. He speaks with the newly dead as they pass from life to wherever spirits truly go, providing them with comfort, an understanding ear, and even the occasional game of chess.

But Mr. Rebeck's reclusive life is soon to be disrupted. An impossible love has blossomed between two ghosts, and Rebeck himself is drawn to a living woman. Helped along by a cynical talking raven and a mysterious cemetery guard, these four souls must learn the true difference between life and death, and make choices that really are forever.

Told with an elegiac wisdom, Peter S. Beagle's first novel is a timeless work of fantasy, imbued with hope and wonder. This updated edition contains the author's final revisions, and stands as the definitive version of an enduring modern classic.

It's a fully-rounded region, this other world of Peter Beagle's imagination. – Kirkus

Both sepulchral and oddly appealing... [Beagle's] ectoplasmic fable has a distinct mossy charm. – Time

A Fine and Private Place is just as wonderful as I remembered it to be: beautifully written, the characters warmly drawn, the pages filled with conversations that run the gamut of the human condition.... it's a great book in a lovely affordable package. – The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

Beagle has been compared, not unreasonably, with Lewis Carrol and J. R. R. Tolkein, but he stands squarely and triumphantly on his own feet. – The Saturday Review

Delightful! – San Francisco Chronicle

A wonderful work of literature...a gem of a novel. – BookLoons