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Staff Pick
Set in the same inexplicable town as the podcast that spawned it, Welcome to Night Vale is Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor’s debut novel in the Night Vale universe. While remaining firmly grounded in the mythos of the podcast, the novel reaches further to provide a glimpse at daily life in an exceptionally unsettling town. Recommended By Ashleigh B., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
From the creators of the #1 international hit podcast Welcome to Night Valepodcast comes an imaginative mystery of appearances and disappearances that is also a poignant look at the ways in which we all struggle to find ourselves... no matter where we live.
Welcome to Night Vale... a friendly desert community somewhere in the American Southwest. In this ordinary little town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are commonplace parts of everyday life, the lives of two women, with two mysteries, are about to converge.
Pawnshop proprietor Jackie Fierro abides by routine. But a crack appears in the standard order of her perpetually nineteen-year-old life when a mysterious man in a tan jacket gives her a slip of paper marked by two pencil-smudged words: KING CITY. Everything about the man unsettles her, especially the paper that she cannot remove from her hand. Yet when Jackie puts her life on hold to search for the man, no one who meets him can seem to remember anything about him.
Diane Crayton's fifteen-year-old son, Josh, is moody and a shape-shifter. Lately, Diane has started to see the boy's father everywhere she goes, looking the same as he did the day he left when they were teenagers. Josh is growing ever more curious about his estranged father leading to a disaster Diane can see coming but is helpless to prevent.
Diane s search to reconnect with her son and Jackie's search to reclaim her routine life draw them increasingly closer to each other, and to this place that may hold the key to their mysteries and their futures... if they can ever find it.
Review
"All hail the glow cloud as the weird and wonderful town of Night Vale brings itself to fine literature.... A fantastic addition with a stand-alone tale of the mysterious desert town that also offers loyal listeners some interesting clues about the nature of the place." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Review
"Take Conan’s Hyborea, teleport it to the American Southwest, dress all the warriors in business casual and hide their swords under the floorboards — that’s Night Vale: absurd, magical, wholly engrossing, and always harboring some hidden menace." John Darnielle, author of Wolf in White Van
Review
"Fink and Cranor’s prose hints there’s an empathetic humanity underscoring their well of darkly fantastic situations.... The book builds toward a satisfyingly strange exploration of the strange town’s intersection with an unsuspecting real world." Los Angeles Times
Review
"The book is charming and absurd - think This American Life meets Alice in Wonderland." Washington Post
Review
"This is a splendid, weird, moving novel…It manages beautifully that trick of embracing the surreal in order to underscore and emphasize the real - not as allegory, but as affirmation of emotional truths that don’t conform to the neat and tidy boxes in which we’re encouraged to house them." NPR.org
About the Author
Joseph Fink created the Welcome to Night Vale and Alice Isn't Dead podcasts. He lives with his wife in New York.
Jeffrey Cranor cowrites the Welcome to Night Vale and Within the Wires podcasts. He also cocreates theater and dance pieces with choreographer/wife Jillian Sweeney. They live in New York.