Whiskey for the Holy Ghost by Edward Mullany

In spare, haunting flashes of prose and evocative line art, Edward Mullany captures the small fissures and quiet rituals of life. From quitting a job to drinking alone, each illustrated story reveals how the ordinary can remain ordinary. Perfect for fans of Lydia Davis and books that make you rethink what books can be.

Edward Mullany Interview at Neon Pajamas

• 232 pages
• ISBN 978-1-945028-72-4
• Publication date: September 30, 2025

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Is meaning found in life’s arbitrariness—or in how it just seems arbitrary?

In this unique and funny collection of very short stories and accompanying illustrations, Edward Mullany captures the quiet moments and fleeting insights that outline our hyper self-conscious experiences. Across urban and rural landscapes, mundane routines and spiritual searching, Mullany’s brief, vivid stories illuminate how the ordinary can … remain ordinary. There’s no attempt or need in the book to propose a conclusion other than what the stories themselves contain.

A man resigns from his job because he “just doesn’t feel like it anymore,” unable to explain further. A couple drifts apart after the death of a beloved dog, conversations fading into silence. A man who works in the financial district hires someone to follow him in order to find out if someone else is already following him.

With precise prose that is spare and recursive, these mostly one-sentence stories offer glimpses into lives at once familiar and strange. Each drawing elaborates on the sense of mystery, opening up the angles from which to encounter the characters and their preoccupations.

Edward Mullany, author of three previous books from Publishing Genius, writes with a painter’s eye for detail and a stand-up comic’s ear for cadence. This fourth book is perhaps his most distilled and haunting yet—a masterwork of fiction for readers who savor the delicate weight of words.

Perfect for fans of Donald Barthelme, Lydia Davis, Amy Hempel, and the artful brevity of contemporary innovative fiction.

Advance Praise

“An extraordinary book. Poignant, charming and eerily disturbing — sometimes all at the same time. You will find yourself laughing as your heart sinks.  A unique and haunting treasure.” —Janice Shapiro, author of the graphic novel Honoria: A Fortuitous Friendship

“I can’t help but describe this work as ministering. What else do you call something as nourishing, as consoling, as Whiskey for the Holy Ghost? The stories and sketches of this book buzz with Mullany’s singularly humane absurdism. There’s something so generous in how each page begins anew, opening and closing with a quixotic faith in the next logical step…We’re never much more than a sketch, it turns out, a moment with nowhere to land, and no one honors the awakening of that moment with more tenderness and humor than Edward Mullany.” –Jacob White, author of Being Dead in South Carolina

“Whimsical and deeply soulful, Mullany’s book presents the complex human experience in vignettes that are humorous, sorrowful, shocking, and heartening. Written in a style that’s been burnished to sound like pure human thinking, these fantastical tableaus are our real thoughts and feelings, the rare art that shows us our strangeness, and makes the world new.” —Craig Beaven, author of In Arcadia, Natural History, and Teaching the Baby to Say I Love You

“Like Cubist pictures, which are complete in themselves … the collection becomes living fiction, as close to a truly organic text as we are likely to see.” —W. Lawrence Hogue, Moores Professor of English, Emeritus, University of Houston

“Edward Mullany pulls the structure of the narrative out of limitations that had never occurred to me…His drawing and writing share the expressive warmth and friendly bite of a fountain pen on a napkin between friends at a bar. Immensely readable in any location or mood.” —Maggie Umber, author of the graphic novels Chrysanthemum Under the Waves and Sound of Snow Falling

About the Author

Edward Mullany is the author of three previous books with Publishing Genius—If I Falter at the Gallows, Figures for an Apocalypse, and The Three Sunrises. He is also the creator of the comic strip Rachel and Ben, and an unpublished graphic novel Sursum Corda.