Ghosts (Raina Telgemeier) Books in Order

Even though this page is filed like a series, Ghosts is really a self-contained story.

At the center are sisters Catrina, usually called Cat, and Maya, who move with their family to the Northern California coast so Maya's cystic fibrosis will be easier on her lungs. Cat does not want to leave her old life behind, and she definitely does not want to hear that their new town, Bahía de la Luna, is full of ghosts. Maya, on the other hand, is curious from the start. That difference, fear on one side and eagerness on the other, gives the book its engine.

The setting matters a lot. Bahía de la Luna is foggy, hilly, and a little eerie even before anything supernatural happens. The ocean air, the winding streets, the old mission, and the seasonal movement toward Día de los Muertos all make the town feel like a place where memory hangs close to the surface. Telgemeier uses that atmosphere well. The ghosts are spooky enough to create tension, but the deeper question is what the family does with illness, uncertainty, and the knowledge that love does not fix everything.

Cat carries most of the emotional weight. She loves Maya fiercely, but that love shows up as worry, frustration, protectiveness, and guilt. Maya is sick, but she is not written as passive or fragile in every scene. She is funny, stubborn, social, and determined to meet the ghosts for herself. Their parents are trying to keep life moving, which means the story never feels cut off from family routines. Meals, school, neighbors, and local traditions all keep pressing in.

Tender, spooky, and sad in quiet ways.

What links the book together is not a big battle or a puzzle to solve. It is the gradual change in how Cat understands fear. At first she wants to stay away from anything that reminds her of death, loss, or the things she cannot control. As the town prepares for its festival of remembrance, she starts to see that the ghosts in the story are not only there to scare people. They also represent memory, grief, family history, and the wish to stay connected to the people we miss.

That makes Ghosts a different kind of Raina Telgemeier book. It is fiction rather than memoir, and it leans more into mood than Smile or Sisters do. But it still carries her familiar strengths: clear emotions, believable family dynamics, and an eye for how kids talk when they are trying to be brave. If you pick it up expecting a full-on horror story, this is not that. Think of it instead as a middle grade graphic novel about sisters, illness, and remembrance, told with sea fog, skeletons, and just enough chill in the air.