Good Night, Sleep Tight - by Brian Evenson (Paperback)

About the Book

""Perhaps tomorrow I will wake up another person. Perhaps tomorrow I will wake up not a person at all." From the "master of literary horror" (GQ) comes a collection of new stories tracing the limits and consequences of artificial intelligence and "post-human" relationships. Populated by twins stepping into worlds of absence, bears who lick their cubs into creation, and artificial beings haunted by their less-than-human nature, each page sketches a world where our all-too-real feelings of isolation and ecological dread take on an otherworldly tinge. In Good Night, Sleep Tight, Brian Evenson deftly weaves ethical dilemmas, maternal warmth, and echoes of apocalypse into his most tender, disquieting book yet"--

Book Synopsis

"Perhaps tomorrow I will wake up another person. Perhaps tomorrow I will wake up not a person at all."

From the "master of literary horror" (GQ) comes a collection of new stories tracing the limits and consequences of artificial intelligence and "post-human" relationships. Populated by twins stepping into worlds of absence, bears who lick their cubs into creation, and artificial beings haunted by their less-than-human nature, each page sketches a world where our all-too-real feelings of isolation and ecological dread take on an otherworldly tinge.

In Good Night, Sleep Tight, Brian Evenson deftly weaves ethical dilemmas, maternal warmth, and echoes of apocalypse into his most tender, disquieting book yet.

Review Quotes

Praise for Good Night, Sleep Tight

Finalist for the 2025 World Fantasy Awards
A Southwest Review Must-Read Book of 2024
A Locus 2024 Recommended Reading Pick
A Parade Best New Halloween Book of 2024
A SIBA Read This Next! September Pick
A The Millions Most Anticipated Books of Summer 2024
A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2024

"[Evenson's] writing approaches the luxurious, haunted feeling that Bradbury conjured so well. It's almost a shame to have all these stories in the same place; they shouldn't be read at once for risk of overdosing." -Liz Braswell, The Wall Street Journal

"This collection of unsettling stories blurs the lines between dream and reality, life and death, human and not, Bradbury and Borges." --Kirkus

The prolific master of the eerie and strange can terrify and delight at any length, but his story collections are always a feast for any reader. If you've never read Evenson but are a fan of George Saunders, Ray Bradbury, Jorge Luis Borges... now's the time to rectify your mistake." --Literary Hub

"A master class in "wrongness," in existential dread." --Ian Mond, Locus

"Fans of the strange and outréeacute; will relish this." --Publishers Weekly

"It is practically impossible to do, after cracking open any collection of stories by the horror master Evenson, what the title of this latest collection asks of its readers. This book is already haunting you even before you've opened it." --The Millions

"Evenson is probably your favorite horror writer's favorite horror author." --Liberty Hardy, Book Riot

"Tracing the surreal edges of our existence and displaying the author's trademark sense of severe isolation and paranoia, Good Night, Sleep Tight offers increasingly fraught moral quandaries and coming disasters with every story. Master of the short form scary story Brian Evenson delivers another pitch perfect collection." --Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books

"A gathering of stories that worries at a theme, pulls at some cosmic thread you'd just as soon stay un-pulled. Good night? Sleep tight? Good luck with that."--Andy Davidson, Southwest Review

"Evenson's clear, fluid, perfectly balanced prose is a joy to read while deceptively simple, streamlined plots are hiding abysses of dark portents." --Dejan Ognjanovic, Rue Morgue

"The Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowskim once wrote that "it is perhaps better for us to totter insecurely on the edge of an unknown abyss than simply to close our eyes and deny its existence." Brian Evenson, in his masterful stories, whatever combination of weird fiction, horror, and science fiction they might be; leaves his readers tottering exactly there." --Zachary Gillan, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Evenson manages to tell stories that are fresh and new while remaining anchored firmly in the rich history of genre traditions. Read this. It will scare you. Then read it again. It'll be scarier the second time." --David Lewis, Strange Horizons

"A collection written not to bring the reader to satisfying conclusions but to amplify the dread of unfinished business." --Booklist

"Good Night, Sleep Tigh illuminates strange and dark parts of our fragile existence. Without a doubt, the stories are frightening, but they are so gripping, so unexpected, that one can neither look away nor avoid seeing things different

About the Author

Praised by Peter Straub for going "furthest out on the sheerest, least sheltered narrative precipice," Brian Evenson has won the World Fantasy Award, The International Horror Guild Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. He is also the recipient of three O. Henry Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was a finalist for the Ray Bradbury Prize.