"Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep is weird in all the best ways possible . . . These tales are plucked from bizarre worlds, from the blood of shadow creatures, from the tears of angels. Let them haunt you." -Gabino Iglesias, author of The Devil Takes You Home

A collection of short stories moving through time and place, exploring the spaces where we haunt each other and ourselves through our choices, our institutions, and our dreams.

Adam Soto, author of the debut novel This Weightless World, which Robin Sloan called "The social novel for the 21st century," returns with Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep.

In the title story, a one-armed Harlem Hellfighter goes in search of his specially altered military uniform while Influenza ravages Philadelphia. In "Sleepy Things," a man is bound to the bedside of his comatose girlfriend who haunts his mother's dreams. In "Wren & Riley," a couple travels to Wyoming to visit a childhood friend who killed her abusive husband. And in "The Vegetable Church," a pair of Syrian sisters, refugees of the civil war, find themselves at a crossroads in the home of their European hosts while their dead father whispers to them words of comfort and guidance.

The stories in Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep, strange and unsettling, explore the quiet spaces where the living and the dead alike haunt one another through their choices, dreams, and institutions.

Adam Soto is a co-web editor at American Short Fiction. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is a former Michener-Copernicus Foundation Fellow. He lives with his wife in Austin, TX, where he is a teacher and a musician. Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep is his second book.

A collection of unsettling and uncanny ghost stories traveling across time, space, and genres by the author of critically acclaimed novel This Weightless World.

In the words of Robin Sloan, Adam Soto's debut, This Weightless World, was "the social novel for the 21st century." Soto writes speculative fiction that subverts expectations while adhering to the tropes that make the genre so familiar. With his sophomore collection of ghost stories, Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep, he continues in this tradition, switching modes from sci-fi to horror while maintaining his signature style.

In Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep, a soon-to-be empty-nester is visited by her son's comatose girlfriend every night; a couple travels to see a childhood friend in Wyoming after she has killed her abusive husband; a trillionaire centenarian, bent on becoming the first person to die of natural causes on Mars, puts his plans on hold when a Martian woman is murdered; and a one-armed Harlem Hellfighter goes in search of his altered military uniform while Influenza ravages Philadelphia.

Sorrowful, funny, and surreal, the warped and eerie stories in Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep explore the ways we haunt each other and ourselves through our choices, institutions, and dreams.