An extraordinary debut novel in which the transforming love and friendship between two young men during one unforgettable teenage summer in rural New England haunts them into adulthood

It took three car crashes to kill Jake.

Theron David Alden is there for the first two: the summer they meet in rural New Hampshire, when he’s fifteen and anxious, and Jake’s seventeen and a natural; then six years later in New York City, those too-short, ecstatic, painful nights that change both their lives forever.

Theron is not there for the third crash.

And yet, their story contains so much joy and self-discovery: the glorious, stupid simplicity of a boyhood joke; the devastation of insecurity; the way a great song can distill a universe; the limits of what we can know about each other; the mysterious, porous, ungraspable fault line between yourself and the person you love better than yourself; the beautiful, toxic elixir of need and hope and want.

Brimming with rare, radioactive talent, August Thompson has written a love story that is electrically alive and exquisitely tuned.

Praise for Anyone’s Ghost:

Longlisted for the Center For Fiction First Novel Prize

Named a Best Book of 2024 by Amazon, Debutiful, Elle, and Vogue

“August Thompson captures coming of age in a sleepy New England town with pitch-perfect loneliness, despair, and humor…An achingly beautiful novel that confronts the discomforts of teenagers, sexuality, drugs, booze, and love.”

—Amazon Book Review

“A dazing portrait of anxious boyhood, and of equally uncertain sexual awakening… Thompson writes with finesse about the flood of emotion behind friends Theron and Jake… a gutting experience, but one with precious insight.”

—Elle

“[An] electric debut novel . . . With shades of André Aciman and Donna Tartt, the book fascinates from its first sentence . . . Thompson’s hypnotic prose and addictive plot moves and exhilarates in equal measure.”

—Vogue

“One of the best first novels I’ve come across in years.”

—Brett Easton Ellis, The Brett Easton Ellis Podcast

“This new novel is a real heart-squeezer. Beautiful, one of a kind and perfectly titled.”
—Matt Berninger, lead singer of The National

“[Anyone’s Ghost is] a beautiful exploration of the all-encompassing nature of friendship, specifically male friendship, and the devastating speed at which grief can derail your life. The story follows two teenagers, Theron and Jake, as they grow up and apart from one another. Thompson paints a nuanced and understanding portrait of love and bisexuality while underlining how everything from the people you know to the music you listen to as a teenager can brand themselves indelibly on your sense of self.”

—Service95

“From the very first sentence, this dazzling debut demands to be listened to…This coming-of-age saga digs up vulnerable parts of every character, brushes off the dirt, and reflects their desires into perfect prisms of light…Thompson is an exciting new voice in queer literary fiction, and this is an essential novel.”

—Library Journal (starred review)

“Anyone’s Ghost thrums with tenderness and tension… The writer’s debut novel interrogates grief and masculinity through a gut-wrenching tale of an all-consuming love… the writing is both an ode to a love that was not diminished by time—and also an elegy. Thompson proves that this kind of unrelenting nostalgia can be dynamic and even startlingly sensual… This oscillation between the beauty and isolation of masculinity is what makes this narrative so compelling… Thompson is not afraid of that emotional intensity—rather, he revels in its tension… Anyone’s Ghost establishes Thompson as a master of writing toward persistent nostalgia.”

—Document Journal

“The unattainable boy will always be out there, but a genuinely powerful debut that succeeds solely on its merits instead of hype is a lot harder to find. Anyone’s Ghost, however, is one.”

—The Irish Times

“You know those books that you take with you everywhere? That you won’t stop talking about to your friends? That bring it all back? That change you? Anyone’s Ghost is that book. Thompson has fired a literary flare into the black night of the universe and the illumination is spectacular.”
—Junot Díaz

“[A] dirtbag Call Me by Your Name… Revealing the power of the first flush of romantic and erotic connection… A brash and well-turned coming-of-age tale.”

–Kirkus Reviews

An Amazon Editor’s Pick, July 2024

“Thompson’s touching, unforgettable story follows the two across the years as their relationship changes, but their shared history continues to hold them together.”

—Town and Country (best books of summer 2024)

“An expansive coming-of-age novel where Thompson isn’t afraid to lean into heartbreaking moments. It’ll make you cry but it’s so much more than that. Thompson finds the funny, the horny, and the uncomfortable in growing up and finding yourself when everything around you just doesn’t seem right.”

—Debutiful

“The genre of queer romance as coming-of-age story is well-trodden, but this unusually perceptive novel avoids any narrow schema and stands out for being grounded in the ambivalences and indeterminacies of intimate experience.”

—The Sydney Morning Herald

“The novel obliterates the tired cliché that bisexual men simply haven't fessed up and live lives of inauthenticity… Gay men whose first attraction was to straight men, a secret love that holds the potential for consummation, will recognize themselves in Thompson's well-drawn characters. Gay men whose favorite flavor in men remains straight might find in Anyone's Ghost the sacred text they've long awaited… The pages about their "romance" are the most compelling even in a novel this carefully crafted. Thompson's honesty about the slithery nature of forbidden love and its consequences outshines the protestations and prevarications of the two men whose lives have tumbled together, innocently enough but destined for tragedy… The single most remarkable aspect of this compulsively readable novel is Thompson's willingness to delve into both physical and emotional details that a lesser writer would dodge. Even the frequent descriptions of the heavy metal music both men love and the binding force it has in their relationship turns up gold.”

—The Bay Area Reporter

“The moody and moving chronicle of a complicated friendship between two young men. . . Anyone’s Ghost marks Thompson as a writer to watch.”

—Publishers Weekly

“With beautifully crafted prose and lived-in dialogue, Thompson’s debut novel captures the joy and agony of first love alongside the struggle to understand and become oneself.”

—Booklist

“[Anyone’s Ghost] is a richly evocative novel that derives power from its own tolerance of ambiguity. Can we ever really know someone else – or indeed, our own selves?.”

—AnOther Magazine

“August Thompson’s debut novel is a non-stop yearn fest.”

—Dazed Magazine

“Charting the course of a doomed friendship, Thompson explores the power of male intimacy and the complexity of sexuality in modern American society, demonstrating how the most chance encounters can change our future entirely and shape our relationship with the world around us — for better or for worse. As asserted by American novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, “This novel will make you cry”, and the audiobook, so tenderly read by Lee Osorio, even more so.”

—Attitude Magazine

“Thompson captures the raw intensity of [the characters’] connection with poetic precision. Anyone's Ghost is an addictive novel about desire, masculinity, and the lasting mark of our first loves.”

—Hobart Pulp

““Moving and darkly funny, Anyone’s Ghost is a nuanced bisexual romance that focuses on the muck of falling in love as much as its joys.”

—Our Culture

“[A] brilliant new novel.”

—American Songwriter

“It’s bursting with youthful drama complete with car crashes and confused sexuality and friendship and masculinity and rock and roll and all of it bundled up in a roiling mess of emotions and unspoken desire. With Junot Díaz and Darin Straus and Jonathan Safran Foer [vouching for it,] it’s one of the debuts of the year.”

—Parade

“Anyone’s Ghost is about so very many things: the pains of growing up, friendship and pining, drugs, sex, the frustrations of masculinity and the thrill of testing death itself. But more than any of that, it is an overwhelmingly beautiful love story. This book will make you cry.”
—Jonathan Safran Foer

“In Anyone’s Ghost, August Thompson has given us a devastating, heart-cracking, richly imagined love story for the ages. I read hungrily, relishing Thompson’s poetic eye and deep respect for the complexities of life, loss, sexuality, and love.”
—Sarah Thankam Matthews, author of All This Could Be Different


“This book is a monster: the magnificent writing, the gallery of characters, the fascinating glimpse into the right now make it stand about twenty feet tall among new books I’ve read.”
—Darin Strauss, National Book Critics Circle Award-winner, author of The Queen of Tuesday


“Anyone’s Ghost is a ferocious novel of erotic friendship, uncategorizable love, and vexed masculinity, voiced by a narrator as winning and largehearted as any character I’ve recently met. With its psychedelic prose and fierce moral intelligence, this is one of those books that makes you want to keep living. To read it is to fall more deeply in love with the world.”

—Maggie Millner, author of Couplets: A Love Story