Evenson’s latest collection gathers 19 stories—mostly horror, including several that take place in an undetermined future or a generation starship. If you have any interest in horror fiction, but more than that, if you have any interest in the craft of horror fiction, then you should be reading Brian Evenson.

Evenson is a master at dislocation, at evoking a sense of existential dread. You’d think that eliciting this effect would be a staple of the genre, but it’s hard to create an atmosphere in which something is not quite right without over-explaining or falling back on cliches. Evenson makes it look so easy that it’s easy to dismiss some of the collection’s more “old fashioned” pieces, like one involving a cursed painting. But the real craft is to take the familiar and still make it scary. And Eveneson achieves this every single time. The title story, “Good Night, Sleep Tight,” is a terrific example of this.*

Having said that, the Evenson I love is the one who amps the weird quotient up by a thousand. There are several of those stories here—including a cracker called “Vigil in the Inner Room” (though I might have liked “The Thickening” more).

If you’ve never read Evenson before, this is a good starting point. But really, you can pick up any of his collections or novels. He’s just that good. And since we’re in the spooky month, why not start now!

*As usual, I go into more detail in my review for Locus, out in November.