How to Keep a Ghost from Moving In

Sixteen-year-old Priya Rao knows how to keep an old apartment building running: reset the boiler, unjam a lock, and never trust a quiet pipe. Calder Tower is supposed to be a temporary home for Priya, her mother, and her grandmother. Then Priya finds a sealed apartment, a decades-old eviction notice, and a name that the building refuses to forget. Soon, tenants' belongings begin rearranging themselves into scenes from private fears. As a redevelopment company labels occupied apartments vacant and prepares the tower for demolition, Priya realizes the haunting is revealing a buried history of forced moves, missing leases, and a woman erased from the records. With her estranged friend Mateo, a retired bus mechanic, and a building full of reluctant witnesses, Priya must decide what the ghost really wants before the next inspection turns danger into official truth. Funny, eerie, and grounded in the fragile work of making a home, How to Keep a Ghost from Moving In is a YA horror story about memory, displacement, and the courage to keep names visible when powerful people call a place empty.