The Book of Reservations by Laura Buchwald, Excerpt
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.
Excerpted from The Book of Reservations by Laura Buchwald
Radiance | December 9, 2025
*****
“There is one fundamental difference that gets in the way,” Derek told the doctor.
“What is that?”
“She believes in ghosts.”
“It’s more than that, Derek!” Josie pulled her hand away.
“Fine, it’s more than that. Which makes it harder. She has this whole… connection to the spirit world.”
Dr. Bannister cocked his head toward Josie. For the first time since they’d started talking, a faint smirk appeared on his lips. “How do you mean?”
“I know some people have a hard time with this sort of thing, but it’s part of my lineage. My grandmother—Nanette—could communicate with spirits and passed that ability along to me. So yeah, I know for a fact there is supernatural activity in the restaurant.”
“For a fact,” Dr. Bannister repeated, scribbling and clicking.
“Yes, for a fact. And honestly? That’s kind of how I know everything will be fine with this Declan Kelleher situation.”
Derek scoffed. “Why? Did Nanette tell you it would be?”
“No. It’s not that literal. But I feel a sense of calm when I think about it. It’s like I’m channeling her wisdom.”
Derek rolled his eyes.
“Anyway, some of our sous chefs—”
“Four of them,” he said.
“Four of our sous chefs sensed the energy in the restaurant and got freaked out by it. Trust me, these are not menacing spirits, but I guess it was too much for them. Now we need to find a sous chef. Again.”
Dr. Bannister waited for her to continue, a bemused smile on his face. Instead, Derek stepped in.
“The issue is, a lot of people want to believe in ghosts. Or need to believe in them. I don’t. It’s not my thing, and it’s becoming part of my everyday existence that’s a serious thorn in my side. It’s a liability. With these sous chefs, for some bizarre reason—”
“New Orleans,” Josie said.
“Okay—three of the four were from New Orleans, where our chef is from, and that’s a ‘ghost-friendly’ culture—”
When he put air quotes around “ghost-friendly,” Josie wished she were holding his hand so she could drop it again.
“—so whether it’s the power of suggestion or they’re all tapped into this thing I can’t sense, it’s the reason they all quit. They think the building’s haunted.”
“We have a ghost table,” Josie said proudly.
“A what now?”
“Right,” Derek said. “Our restaurant is partially inspired by some places in New Orleans Josie loves, and that’s beautiful. She has this whole New Orleans thing—”
She took his hand. “I have this whole New Orleans thing.”
“A New Orleans thing?”
“It’s a place that’s very dear to me, even more so because of a connection I share with Nanette.” She toyed with her grandmother’s fleur-de-lis pendant necklace, which she wore every day. “She lived there for a while, and I love it there.”
“One of the restaurants she likes sets a table every night for their ‘resident ghost.’”
Josie dropped his hand at the second set of air quotes.
“Now we have a table set for ours, and sometimes she spends a little too much time with it.”
“With them,” she corrected him.
“Yeah, see, it’s getting fucking weird, Joze.”
She flinched. “Wow.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Derek, is there anything you want to ask of Josie? Anything tangible that might make your relationship stronger?”
He turned to her. “Would you consider getting rid of the table?”
“I mean, do you really think that’s just going to magically make our problems go away? Because it isn’t. And the table is important to me. When we decided to do open the restaurant, you said I could have it.”
Dr. Bannister smiled broadly now, any trace of kindness having left his face. In its place was the smug look Josie knew well of a man who wanted to belittle her.
“Now, Josie.” He spoke painstakingly slowly. “Is it possible that many of the problems you and Derek are having are rooted in this hobby? Relationships require communication and presence.”
“It’s not a hobby.”
“You seem like a fairly intelligent woman. Surely you understand how… unlikely this sounds.”
His use of “fairly” didn’t escape her notice. “I imagine those who can’t or won’t believe consider this unlikely, but this is my world. For whatever reason, I’m saddled with the ability to communicate with the non-living. And even though Derek doesn’t believe, it would be nice if he—my partner—accepted that it’s my reality.”
“Josie, you set a table every night in the restaurant we own together for dead people. How is that not acceptance?”
“Because now you’re asking me to get rid of it and calling me ‘fucking weird.’”
“I didn’t call you that, I said the whole thing is. And it’s not just at the restaurant. It’s everywhere. It’s why we don’t live in a bigger apartment.”
“How is that?” Dr. Bannister asked.
“There were two places for rent when we were looking. One was bigger and on a higher floor. We wound up in the other one because the big one was ‘haunted.’” Josie had never known him to use so many air quotes.
“Josie, are you familiar with Joan of Arc?”
“Of course. Would you like to burn me at the stake?”
“Is it possible the reason it’s hard for you to keep employees—”
“Just sous chefs.”
“To keep sous chefs is that people are uncomfortable working for someone who hears voices or sees visions or however you believe this manifests for you?”
“Ask him about the time Mister Wigglesworth got into the pudding.”
The prompt came out of the ether. It was a man’s voice, with a refined accent like the doctor’s, and Josie knew she alone heard it. She also knew it was probably not in her best interest to follow its suggestion, but she needed something, anything, to wipe the smugness of Dr. Bannister’s face.
“What about the time Mister Wigglesworth got into the pudding?”
The tip of Dr. Bannister’s pencil snapped, and his legal pad slid from his knees. He stared at her, mouth open.
“Who’s Mister Wigglesworth?” she asked.
“My—” He shook his head so rapidly, his jowls danced. “My dog. My childhood dog. My God.”
“Okay. What happened with the pudding?”
“Only my grandfather knows this story.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Derek rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Here we go again.”
© 2025 All Rights Reserved
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Laura Buchwald is a New York City-based writer and editor who has spent a lot of time in New Orleans, where part of her first book, The Coat Check Girl, takes place. The book is the first in a trilogy and addresses themes of grief, found family, and overcoming the elements of our past that continue to haunt us, literally and metaphorically. Laura’s strong belief in an afterlife—along with a healthy dose of questioning its existence—is part of what inspired the series.
The second installment, The Book of Reservations, comes out in December 2025 and addresses the same themes from a different perspective; where once the protagonist feared her ability to connect with the spirit world, in book two she comes to embrace it and see it as the gift it potentially is.
Laura is co-host of the podcast People Who Do Things, a series of conversations about writing and the creative process. She lives in New York City with her husband and dog and travels when she can for inspiration.
Find out more about Laura on her website https://www.laurabuchwald.com/
Category: On Writing
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