It Is an Honest Ghost

From Kenya to Quebec, these wry and unconventional stories explore the different ways we're haunted ...

Teenagers philosophize on the nature of ontology while fearing there's a ghost in the old mill they're stuck in; a man encounters an old friend in the unlikeliest of places; nineteenth-century inventor Sigismund Mohr is vividly brought back from obscurity; and two journalists travel to Kenya for a conference, where one of them has a paranoid breakdown.

It Is an Honest Ghost is a funny and often eerie collection that explores what lies beyond mortality - if anything, that is.

'A thrilling collection: hot-headed, existential, crystalline. Goldbach's novella Hic et Ubique illuminates the nightmare of being a man in this world -- the twisted, spiritual conversion of buddy into warrior. This book is cadenced and visionary.' - Tamara Faith Berger

'Searching and restless, a new Goldbach story is a thing to celebrate. A whole collection of them? A Mardi Gras of mischievous goodness. This fiction slays hearts in the most wondrous of ways.' - Jeff Parker

Praise for The Devil and the Detective

'The world has hitherto been divided into plotters who wrote in shoddy sentences and linguistic aesthetes who wrote beautiful sentences but couldn't make anything happen on the page, no plot. Goldbach manages to do both - a thrilling plot and beautiful language. He has raised the bar for both murder mysteries and literary writing.' - Josip Novakovich

'Mr. Goldbach will be a fun writer to watch. Check him out.' - Padgett Powell



John Goldbach is the author of The Devil and the Detective (Coach House, 2013) and the collection Selected Blackouts (Insomniac, 2009). He lives in Montreal, Quebec.