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Ghost Sickness
This is not a normal part of the grieving process.
When Kyle Kintner’s brother dies suddenly on the other side of the world, it doesn’t take long for the ghosts to appear. Not the metaphorical kind that accompany a tragedy, but real ones. Shattered and screaming, they stalk Kyle through neon-lit alleys in Shanghai, under the mossy canopies of Florida’s backroads, down through the slums of Southeast Asia, and beyond…where the islands bear no name. Caught between time zones and his own bitter memories, Kyle must navigate more than grief. He must untangle the sins of his family and decipher the dead’s demands—and what he will demand from them in return.
What follows is a dark, fast-paced descent into the emotional and supernatural fallout of absence, addiction, and male identity. Jason S. Hornsby, acclaimed author of Eleven Twenty-Three and Every Sigh, The End, delivers a genuinely haunting novel that merges expat malaise with Southern Gothic horror. Brutal, bleakly funny, and profoundly human, Ghost Sickness is a story for anyone who's ever tried—and failed—to leave the past behind.
“Bleak, beautiful, and deeply disturbing. Hornsby drags the haunted house into the modern expat psyche, then burns it down with hallucinatory dread.”
- Bangkok Post
“Hornsby reaches into the depths of his own personal experience, slashes and stabs at it with a knife, and spills the remains out onto the page. A true masterpiece of grief and permanent loss.”
- Bowie Ibarra, author of the Down the Road series
“There’s something terrifying about how naturally this character’s life unravels. Hornsby asks his readers the tough questions, where the only difference between Kyle and the rest of us is that we’re still deluded into thinking there’s a way out of all the madness.”
- Drew Jaques, author of the Atlas series
When Kyle Kintner’s brother dies suddenly on the other side of the world, it doesn’t take long for the ghosts to appear. Not the metaphorical kind that accompany a tragedy, but real ones. Shattered and screaming, they stalk Kyle through neon-lit alleys in Shanghai, under the mossy canopies of Florida’s backroads, down through the slums of Southeast Asia, and beyond…where the islands bear no name. Caught between time zones and his own bitter memories, Kyle must navigate more than grief. He must untangle the sins of his family and decipher the dead’s demands—and what he will demand from them in return.
What follows is a dark, fast-paced descent into the emotional and supernatural fallout of absence, addiction, and male identity. Jason S. Hornsby, acclaimed author of Eleven Twenty-Three and Every Sigh, The End, delivers a genuinely haunting novel that merges expat malaise with Southern Gothic horror. Brutal, bleakly funny, and profoundly human, Ghost Sickness is a story for anyone who's ever tried—and failed—to leave the past behind.
“Bleak, beautiful, and deeply disturbing. Hornsby drags the haunted house into the modern expat psyche, then burns it down with hallucinatory dread.”
- Bangkok Post
“Hornsby reaches into the depths of his own personal experience, slashes and stabs at it with a knife, and spills the remains out onto the page. A true masterpiece of grief and permanent loss.”
- Bowie Ibarra, author of the Down the Road series
“There’s something terrifying about how naturally this character’s life unravels. Hornsby asks his readers the tough questions, where the only difference between Kyle and the rest of us is that we’re still deluded into thinking there’s a way out of all the madness.”
- Drew Jaques, author of the Atlas series
347 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 22, 2025
2 people are currently reading
4 people want to read
About the author
Jason S. Hornsby
8 books42 followersJason S. Hornsby is the author of DESERT BLEEDS RED, ELEVEN TWENTY-THREE, and EVERY SIGH, THE END, as well as several short stories and articles for time travel and horror anthologies. His work has been highly lauded for its originality, international settings, roots in current events, dark humor, themes of paranoia, and extreme horror.
His latest novel, DESERT BLEEDS RED, has proven a major critical success. New York Times best-selling author Peter Clines described it as "...a masterpiece. It isn't limited by genre or style or any of those other ways people try to contain a book. It's just a masterpiece." Craig DiLouie, author of SUFFER THE CHILDREN and THE CHILDREN OF RED PEAK, said that Hornsby's "prose runs deep and his imagination and sheer talent soar in this very dark and epic fantasy."
Originally from Lakeland, Florida, Hornsby is an honors graduate of University of South Florida, with degrees in Literature and American Studies. His first major release, EVERY SIGH, THE END, was written in his first year following graduation, and is considered by all the cool kids as being one of the best zombie novels ever written. He also has a Master's degree in professional writing from the Southern New Hampshire University.
The author moved from his hometown to Beijing in 2008, where he remained for nearly four years. After the release of ELEVEN TWENTY-THREE in 2010, Hornsby traveled to some of the most remote areas of China as research for the epic DESERT BLEEDS RED. He was present during the 2009 Urumqi riots, as well as political insurrections in Sichuan and Inner Mongolia. Hornsby was witness and even party to stabbings, brawls, and routine sidewalk bloodshed, and spent a month recuperating from back surgery in a Beijing hospital. He is a regular in the expat trouble-making scene, throwing up in the alley behind all the best dive bars and hidden hutong hangouts.
He has traveled and dodged trouble in over fourteen provinces in China thus far, as well as backpacked, hitchhiked, and philandered his way across Southeast Asia.
When not teaching English literature or traversing the globe, he also contributes to several travel and expat lifestyle magazines in Southeast Asia and China. Since summer of 2022, Hornsby and his family have lived in Bangkok. Before that, there were stints in Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, Ningbo, and Chengdu.
He has no current plans for a permanent return to America, but is very close to finishing his long-awaited fourth novel, tentatively titled GHOST SICKNESS.
His latest novel, DESERT BLEEDS RED, has proven a major critical success. New York Times best-selling author Peter Clines described it as "...a masterpiece. It isn't limited by genre or style or any of those other ways people try to contain a book. It's just a masterpiece." Craig DiLouie, author of SUFFER THE CHILDREN and THE CHILDREN OF RED PEAK, said that Hornsby's "prose runs deep and his imagination and sheer talent soar in this very dark and epic fantasy."
Originally from Lakeland, Florida, Hornsby is an honors graduate of University of South Florida, with degrees in Literature and American Studies. His first major release, EVERY SIGH, THE END, was written in his first year following graduation, and is considered by all the cool kids as being one of the best zombie novels ever written. He also has a Master's degree in professional writing from the Southern New Hampshire University.
The author moved from his hometown to Beijing in 2008, where he remained for nearly four years. After the release of ELEVEN TWENTY-THREE in 2010, Hornsby traveled to some of the most remote areas of China as research for the epic DESERT BLEEDS RED. He was present during the 2009 Urumqi riots, as well as political insurrections in Sichuan and Inner Mongolia. Hornsby was witness and even party to stabbings, brawls, and routine sidewalk bloodshed, and spent a month recuperating from back surgery in a Beijing hospital. He is a regular in the expat trouble-making scene, throwing up in the alley behind all the best dive bars and hidden hutong hangouts.
He has traveled and dodged trouble in over fourteen provinces in China thus far, as well as backpacked, hitchhiked, and philandered his way across Southeast Asia.
When not teaching English literature or traversing the globe, he also contributes to several travel and expat lifestyle magazines in Southeast Asia and China. Since summer of 2022, Hornsby and his family have lived in Bangkok. Before that, there were stints in Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, Ningbo, and Chengdu.
He has no current plans for a permanent return to America, but is very close to finishing his long-awaited fourth novel, tentatively titled GHOST SICKNESS.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 28, 2025
Ghost Sickness is a cleverly-written novel with sprinkles of dark humor throughout, a ghost story that is honest in its approach to the subject of grief, which makes it immediately relatable. There is a fine line between carrying the memory of a dead loved one and becoming obsessed with their passing to the point of ignoring the living. It's painful to follow the protagonist of this novel, Kyle, as he does exactly the latter, forsaking all others in hopes of reuniting with his deceased younger brother.
It doesn't make matters any less complicated and foreboding that Kyle developed the ability to see ghosts upon his brother's passing, which he takes as a sign that he can make contact with him, if he can only track him down. Lucky for us horror readers, as Kyle begins to act as a conduit, communicating with these ghosts who appear to him exactly as they died, it allows ample opportunity for author, Jason S. Hornsby, to describe gory scenes of death in gruesome detail. Bonus!
But this book is not shock-based horror written strictly for thrills. This story carries emotional weight--a heavy weight, like an anchor, and we must helplessly observe as it pulls Kyle down, down, down...
I recommend Ghost Sickness to just about anyone, even if horror is not your cup of tea. I often say that the horror genre is the perfect way to approach exploring the human condition, and this novel is proof of that. Five stars!
It doesn't make matters any less complicated and foreboding that Kyle developed the ability to see ghosts upon his brother's passing, which he takes as a sign that he can make contact with him, if he can only track him down. Lucky for us horror readers, as Kyle begins to act as a conduit, communicating with these ghosts who appear to him exactly as they died, it allows ample opportunity for author, Jason S. Hornsby, to describe gory scenes of death in gruesome detail. Bonus!
But this book is not shock-based horror written strictly for thrills. This story carries emotional weight--a heavy weight, like an anchor, and we must helplessly observe as it pulls Kyle down, down, down...
I recommend Ghost Sickness to just about anyone, even if horror is not your cup of tea. I often say that the horror genre is the perfect way to approach exploring the human condition, and this novel is proof of that. Five stars!
Displaying 1 of 1 review