A Collapse of Horses

A stuffed bear beats with the rhythm of a dead baby’s heart; a crew on a space mission are dying of exposure to alien dust and at the hands of a killer among them; and a town keeps receding to the east as a man travels back to the father who drove him away. 

In these stories, Brian Evenson unsettles us with the everyday and the extraordinary—the terror of living with the knowledge of all we cannot know. 

Brian Evenson is the author of a dozen works of fiction. He has been a finalist for the Edgar Award and the Shirley Jackson Award, and has won an International Horror Guild Award and American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts. 

‘Evenson’s fiction is stark and often jaw-droppingly funny…Some of the stories here evoke Kafka, some Poe, some Beckett, some Roald Dahl, and one, a demonic teddy-bear chiller called “BearHeart™” even Stephen King, but Evenson’s deadpan style always estranges them a bit from their models: He tells his odd tales oddly, as if his mouth were dry and the words won’t come out right.’ New York Times 

‘There is not a more intense, prolific or apocalyptic writer of fiction in America than Brian Evenson.’ George Saunders 

‘Evenson’s fiction is equal parts obsessive, experimental and violent. It can be soul-shaking.’ New Yorker 

‘A collection of 17 powerful and sometimes very weird stories, some of which will send a shiver up the spine of the most well-balanced reader. Brian Evenson has a genuinely original imagination and a strong stomach.’ Sydney Morning Herald 

‘Brian Evenson is one of the treasures of American story writing, a true successor both to the generation of Coover, Barthelme, Hawkes and Co., but also to Edgar Allan Poe.’ Jonathan Lethem 

‘One of the most provocative, inventive and talented writers we have working today.’ Believer 

‘A Collapse of Horses is a masterclass of the horror short story…Many of these tales will likely have readers leaving their lights on well after they put the book down.’ Aureolas 

‘Evenson is an American writers who sets out to disturb and unsettle his readers. He certainly succeeds with his latest collection of modern horror stories…All very weird, but somehow Evenson pulls it off.’ Daily Mail 

‘A Collapse of Horses is a masterclass of the horror short story. Evenson uses many classic horror tropes—ghosts, incarceration, isolation, surgery, uncannily animated toys—so there are echoes in his work of classics like Poe, Kafka and most recently some of the short stories of China Mieville and the American gothic of Welcome to Night Vale. But he fashions these ideas in his own unique way, painting weird scenes and planting visions that are hard to shake. So that many of these tales will likely have many readers leaving their lights on well after they have put the book down.’ Aurealis 

‘Stories that will not only unnerve and unsettle you, but also chill you to the bone…The ordinary becomes extraordinary and then terrifying. Shades of Kafka. Shadows of Stephen King. Each story brings a new sense of unease and dread. Horror storytelling at its best.’ North & South 

‘To a reader unfamiliar with Evenson’s unique cadence of nastiness, his latest collection of short stories, A Collapse of Horses, is the ideal introduction. Evenson moves through the genres—Western, science fiction, childhood reminiscence, ghost story, found document, confession—and finds ways to make them eerier. His open sentences are often striking…attention snagged our expectations are more than fulfilled.’ Times Literary Supplement