Unable to resist the investigative instincts that run in her blood, Sophie finds herself unravelling a sinister operation that is trawling the foreign student market for its victims. But as Sophie works on tracking down the criminals it becomes evident that someone has knowledge of her and 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 multi­platform writer with a background in screenwriting and script editing, print and online journalism, educational publishing and long and short form fiction. She is also a Secondary School­qualified teacher, with teaching experience and qualifications in the area of EAL (English as an Acquired Language). She has also lived in Beijing, China and studied Mandarin Chinese.

Read More

Ferla has a gift for description and brings alive the small restaurants and dark corners of Sydney frequented mainly by foreign students. The characters are convincing and interesting and the plot, involving student visa fraud and the sex trade, up-to-date and chilling. – SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

For anyone who has lived in Sydney long enough to see the dilapidated streetscapes of southern George Street and Broadway transform into a thriving urban environment, there’s also the frisson of knowing that in the apartment buildings, language schools, little restaurants, bars and cafes is a different society – young and predominantly Asian. This is one of the beauties of living in a cosmopolitan city: the familiar and the exotic are constantly juxtaposed, our knowledge of the multilayered spaces we inhabit is necessarily incomplete. It’s a world waiting to be conjured with words and delivered to the curious, which is exactly what Cath Ferla does with her debut thriller. – WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN

As with all the best crime fiction Ghost Girls is first a ripping yarn and its exploration of modern life does nothing to undermine that. It’s lack of easy answers to the complex issues it explores is fitting: there aren’t easy answers to be had. I am impressed that this is a debut novel for Cath Ferla – it seems too assured both thematically and stylistically for that – and can’t wait to see what she delivers next.  – FAIR DINKUM CRIME

Food, culture, morality, exploitation, crime, a few red herrings, some very diabolical situations and a great female protagonist that you want to know more about … This book packs a heavy punch! A great 5 star debut! – READING, WRITING AND RIESLING

Ghost Girls is the most satisfying kind of crime read: cracking pace, clever plotting, characters you care about, and settings so vivid you can smell them. – ANGELA SAVAGE

The year 2016 is still young and hopefully many good novels will emerge from local writers. However good they are, though, it is already clear that Ghost Girls will be among the very best of them. – ARTSHUB.COM.AU

Ghost Girls is a promising debut that defies easy categorisation … Equal parts mystery, thriller, romance and journey of self-discovery, it will appeal to anyone who has taught a foreign language or spent time as a language student, or who has ever felt like a foreigner. – BOOKS+PUBLISHING

A riveting murder mystery about international students, violence, exploitation, sinister operatives in the underground sex world and identity fraud. – AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW