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

"Goldbach's touch is light and his narrative momentum is fierce." — The Globe and Mail Robert James, a private detective more interested in chronicling his cases than solving them, gets a midnight call from a young woman whose older husband has been found with a knife in his chest. Murder, corruption, and betrayal ensue as he's drawn into the dark underworld of his client, but hapless Robert and his sidekick, a flower-delivery guy, can't stop drinking, smoking, and philosophizing long enough to keep up. Imagine The Big Sleep via Fernando Pessoa, with a side of Buster Keaton. John Goldbach is the author of Selected Blackouts, a collection of stories