Ghostbusters meets The Baby-Sitters Club in this supremely sweet and spooky story about four seventh graders who start a small business helping their local neighborhood spirits pass on to the other side.
SPIRIT SERVICE
by Sarena & Sasha Nanua
Simon & Schuster, April 2025
(via Park, Fine & Brower)
All Raveena wants is to bring back her school’s beloved arts program. It’s been six months since her music-loving grandmother passed, and four since Hollows’ Peak Middle School cut its entire arts budget. Now Raveena has no way to practice music, and worse, no way to honor Grandmama’s memory.
But Raveena’s world turns on its head when she and her friends stumble upon an otherworldly discovery: an old-fashioned telephone with the ability to contact ghosts!
With her newfound possession, Raveena devises the perfect plan to raise funds for the arts program: Spirit Service, an agency that guides deceased townspeople to the afterlife by reconnecting them with their living loved ones. The best part? There are tons of spirits in need of assistance—and people willing to pay big bucks to communicate with them.
But not all spirits are interested in peacefully moving on…
To keep their neighborhood safe, Raveena and her friends must dive into the history of their town and the mysterious phone, and in the process, uncover secrets that are much closer to home.
“Canadian authors Sareena and Sasha Nanua have created an enjoyable story that thoughtfully explores the ways people process grief…This is an entertaining, tender-hearted read for middle graders who like their realistic fiction with a little zap of the paranormal.” —Bulletin of the Center of Children’s Books
“A perfect fit for fans of the Baby-Sitters Club series craving a haunted vibe.” —Booklist
Sarena and Sasha Nanua are twin sisters who love stories about friendship, ghosts, and all things magical. Born on Diwali ten minutes apart, they began writing books together at the age of nine. They are graduates of the English and professional writing programs at the University of Toronto and are the authors of Spirit Service, Sisters of the Snake, and Daughters of the Dawn.
The law in Abai—the last known magical kingdom—does not look kindly on street thieves, but for eighteen-year-old orphan Ria, stealing isn’t a choice of convenience: it’s a matter of survival. So when she and her friend Amir devise a plan to steal priceless jewels from the kingdom’s royal palace and use them to bribe their way into a new kingdom, it seems a new life may finally be within reach. Then, while sneaking into the palace, Ria runs into the princess, and everything she knows about herself is turned on its head—because Princess Rani looks exactly like Ria, down to the freckle. Running into her doppelgänger, Princess Rani doesn’t see her long-lost twin or a dangerous, thieving intruder. She sees an opportunity: a chance to escape the tight confines of her gilded prison before her marriage, and a chance to find the wife of her late, beloved tutor, recently executed for treason, so that Rani can give her the valuable possessions he left behind. After Ria and Rani strike a deal to temporarily switch places, Rani discovers that her father’s kingdom is not the place of prosperity she once thought, and that it’s hurtling toward a dangerous war. Living with the Raja and the queen, Ria learns that they—her family?—have their own dangerous secrets, and that there’s a treasonous conspiracy brewing in the royal court. Neither life inside nor outside the palace walls are safe, and Ria and Rani are in a race against the clock to unravel a conspiracy and stop a war with wits and magic—or else allow the kingdom of Abai to sink into ruin.