Ghost Girls

Ghost Girls

Winter in Sydney. The city is brimming with foreign students and Sophie Sandilands, recently arrived and recuperating from a personal tragedy, takes a job teaching at an English language school. When one of her students leaps to her death from a tenth floor window, it becomes clear that lurking within the psyche of this community is a deep sense of despair and alienation. When it is revealed that the dead woman on the pavement has stolen another's identity, Sophie endeavours to seek out the girl whose identity has been assumed.

Sophie is drawn further into the mystery when it comes to light that other students are missing. Unable to resist the investigative instincts that run in her blood, she finds herself uncovering a sinister operation that is trawling the foreign student market for its victims. As she works on tracking down the criminals at the helm of the operation, it becomes evident that someone is also tracking her and has knowledge of the disappearances in her own past. Will Sophie solve the mystery before she too becomes a ghost?

Ghost Girls richly evokes the sights, smells, tastes and sounds of Sydney's Chinatown, and imagines dark exploitative demands behind closed suburban doors.

Cath Ferla is a multi-platform writer with a background in screenwriting, journalism and educational publishing. Her screenwriting credits include episodes of Australian dramas Sea Patrol and Rescue Special Ops and she has also worked as a script editor and coordinator. Cath is a qualified secondary teacher, with specific experience in the area of EAL (English as an Acquired Language) who has worked in Melbourne, Sydney and Beijing. She has studied Mandarin and, although not fluent and now forgetful, managed to come second in the Sydney finals of 2008 Chinese Bridge (Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign Students). Cath plays flute and is a key member of a Northcote-based world music group Orkeztra Glasso Bashalde.

Ghost Girls
Echo Publishing
Author: Cath Ferla
RRP: $29.99