The Glassy Burning Floor of Hell

The Philadelphia Inquirer, ""Best Books of 2021"" Southwest Review, ""Must-Read Books of 2021"" Literary Hub, ""Most Anticipated Books of 2021"" The A.V. Club, ""Books to Read in August"" Literary Hub, ""10 Story Collections to Read This Summer"" Book Marks, ""August's Best Horror and Sci-Fi"" ""His stories are deeply terrifying and so troubling that they linger in your mind long after you've read them."" -R.L. Stine, creator of Goosebumps ""[A] towering collection of nightmarish horror, sci-fi parables, and weird tales. . . . 'Once I take you there, ' ends another story, 'you'll have a hard time dragging yourself away.' The same could be said of Evenson's unforgettable work, drawn from the darkest corners of the imagination and nearly impossible to forget."" --Publisher's Weekly, starred review ""​​I've always been a fan of shorts, because they often feel impressionistic, like you're floating between worlds. In this collection, Evenson really draws on the horrors of a collapsed environment and the moral choices one makes under pressure."" --April Wolfe, Variety ""Though Evenson shares some DNA with bygone sci-fi delights like Robert Aickman and the O.G. Twilight Zone, his economical sentences and icy storytelling keep readers at arm's length, even as the air starts thinning and the room goes dark. Honestly, is there anything scarier than a narrator who doesn't care?"" --Patrick Rapa, The Philadelphia Inquirer ""Evenson whittles his unclassifiable, elliptical tales onto the page with an exacting obsessiveness normally associated with brain surgery. . . . [His] inventiveness, literary skill and mordant wit are always on full display."" --James Grainger, Toronto Star ""[Evenson's] stories often depict mysterious worlds in which several realities splinter apart. No one is who they seem to be. Everything is a lie, and nothing is true. Today, as our wealthiest citizens race to leave the planet and climate change takes its toll on our forests, oceans, and air, Evenson's unblinking stories of genetic mutations and ecological disaster read as both cautionary and strangely transcendent."" --David Peak, Bookforum ""Imagines what the world might look like beyond the Anthropocene and asks cogent questions about the meaning of community in the face of crisis and natural disasters. The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell uses horror to showcase the potential of utter human monstrosity."" --Alta Journal ""Much like Dante's layers of hell, the stories in The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell tend toward making the readers feel trapped by the situations the characters are facing. . . . There's a special resonance with this book's numerous domed city walls which separate the characters from what lies on the other side, be it toxic air, shimmering creatures, or freedom."" --George Fehringer, Chicago Review of Books ""A new book from Brian Evenson is always a call for celebration and terror."" --Leah Schnelbach, Book Marks ""Few things in literature aren't up for debate, but the fact that Brian Evenson is among the most versatile and accomplished writers of contemporary American fiction is one of them."" --Gabino Iglesias,