The Book of Reservations

Part of the The Ghost Table Trilogy series:

The Coat Check Girl
The Book of Reservations

Editions:ebook, Hardcover

Between the living and the lost, one woman delivers the truth.

Josie Gray has always believed Miss Sylvie’s Bistrot could be a sanctuary for the living… and the dead, with whom she can communicate. As the restaurant struggles to survive in Greenwich Village, the challenges of running a kitchen collide with the demands of her gift, and Josie finds herself stretched thinner than ever.

Her partner, Derek, is becoming distant, unable to reconcile Josie’s insistence on setting the ghost table each night with the practical realities of their business. The tension between them grows, threatening the dream they once shared. Meanwhile, the staff begins to unravel, caught in the schemes of a manipulative new manager and a mysterious sous chef, and the spirits Josie communicates with grow increasingly restless.

Pulled into the unfinished stories of the living and the dead, Josie is tasked with delivering long-buried truths and messages that could alter lives. Each encounter forces her to confront what she owes to others and to herself, and to question whether she can remain anchored in a world that rarely believes in the things she sees.

In the second installment of The Ghost Table trilogy, Josie discovers that every haunting begins with a longing to be heard. Amid the clatter of the kitchen and the whispers of the departed, she must learn how to nourish not just the living, but her own restless heart.

Published: December 9, 2025

Publisher: Radiance

Genres:

Paranormal, Romance, Upmarket

Tags:

About the Author

Laura Buchwald

Laura Buchwald is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Manhattan and considers New Orleans her second home. She’s written for Gotham Magazine, LA Confidential, the websites of Penguin Random House and Simon and Schuster, The New York Daily News, and The New York Post’s Page Six, where she frequently covered the restaurant world and the antics of celebrity chefs. She is co-host of the podcast People Who Do Things, a series of conversations with writers and creators about the creative process.

The Coat Check Girl won a First Chapter contest sponsored by the Bronx Council on the Arts.

Photo by: Shirin Tinati

Other Books By Laura Buchwald

Series: The Ghost Table Trilogy

Sorted First to Last

The Coat Check Girl

The Book of Reservations

Lawless Frontier

On the lawless frontier of the late 19th century, Fort Smith, Arkansas, was the last stop before Indian Territory—a land crawling with outlaws, fugitives, and desperate men who thought the badge held no power. They were all wrong.
Judge Isaac C. Parker, the legendary “Hanging Judge,” was appointed to bring order to the most violent criminal jurisdiction in America—and he needed enforcers willing to ride straight into hell. The Deputy U.S. Marshals who answered that call became legends—men like Bass Reeves, Heck Thomas, and countless others whose names have been lost to history. Armed with a badge, a fast horse, and unshakable determination, they tracked murderers, thieves, and desperados across 74,000 miles of untamed wilderness.
Award-winning author and historian Velda Brotherton brings their stories to life in Lawless Frontier, an essential tribute to the men and women who rode for the judge—and for justice—in the wildest reaches of America. The book features a foreword by New York Times bestselling author and retired Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Marc Cameron, offering unique perspective from one of the modern West’s most respected lawmen.

Land of the Blind

When justice is blind, vengeance sees clearly.
Marion Tullos hunts men—the kind who traffic in flesh, steal innocence, and leave devastation in their wake. She brings them to justice or delivers judgment. The choice is theirs.
Marion and her battle-scarred uncle, Lummy Tullos, follow a trail of terror carved deep across the Western landscape. Every town, every saloon, every shadowed road brings them closer to a single name whispered with dread: The Buyer. Ruthless and untouchable, he is the one-eyed man who has made himself king in a land of the blind.
Once a victim herself, Marion knows all too well the cost of letting evil go unchallenged. But vengeance is only part of the fight. Every mile tests her courage, every confrontation threatens to drag her into darkness, and every choice could cost her the one thing she has never allowed herself…. hope.
Fast, fierce, and relentless, Will Rogers Medallion-winning author Anthony Wood delivers an unflinching story of one woman’s quest to strike down those who prey on the innocent. In a world that has lost its sight, Marion Tullos is the reckoning.

They Came for Blood

When the past comes for blood, you either draw first or die trying.
Tom Callahan was once the government’s deadliest secret—a lethal gun-for-hire leading a team of assassins no one knew existed. Now those days are long gone. Or so he thought.
Now an aging cowboy trying to keep his ranch alive, Callahan wants nothing more than peace… and a sliver of forgiveness. But when word reaches him that his wife and son—long believed dead—may still be alive, that peace turns to dust.
From railroad corruption to a secret slave trade, outlaw towns to Washington’s back rooms, every mile drags Callahan deeper into the rot of the nation he once served. Hunted, framed, and haunted by the men he used to ride with, he’s forced to become the one thing he swore he’d never be again—a killer.
In a world built on blood, there’s no clean way out. To save his family, Callahan will have to face the ghosts of his past—and decide if redemption is worth the price in bodies.
New York Times bestselling author M. William Phelps delivers a brutal, timely, and cinematic Western thriller where the trail to the truth runs red and redemption rides a pale horse.

Roan & Weatherford