Stephanie Jorden’s “Almost Home” Pairs a Grieving Buyer With the Ghost Who Renovated Her House

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Stephanie Jorden has released "Almost Home," a paranormal romance novella centered on Shelby Jones, a woman recovering from a broken engagement who buys a renovated Victorian home seeking a quiet restart, only to find it already occupied by Simon Moretti, the architect who designed the renovation and who has been dead since 1988.

The book is part of what Jorden calls her Living with Spirit series, and according to the announcement, it grew out of her earlier work in television, where she originally developed the characters as scripts before converting them into novella form. Jorden is Chicago-based and trained at Second City’s Training Program; her screenwriting has drawn a nomination for the Gordon Parks Award, and the announcement credits that background for the novella’s mix of comic dialogue and dramatic weight.

The plot turns on a standoff: Shelby wants Simon gone, and Simon, able to touch and connect with another person for the first time in decades, refuses to leave. The announcement describes the story moving from that conflict into something more intimate, with both characters confronting what "home" means and whether a relationship between the living and the dead can hold. "I wanted to explore the idea that sometimes the person who can help us heal is the one we least expect to meet," Jorden said in the announcement, adding that the book is ultimately about acceptance and second chances.

"Almost Home" is published through Page Publishing and is available at bookstores and through Apple Books, Amazon, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble.

Studio CarryOnHarry notes the title isn’t an uncommon one in genre fiction — there are a handful of unrelated books sharing it — so readers searching it out should double-check they’ve landed on Jorden’s Living with Spirit entry rather than a different "Almost Home."

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