R.B. RUSSELL

LEAVE YOUR SLEEP

PS Publishing, 2012

Short story collection

 

Contents:

"An Unconventional Exorcism"

"The Red Rose and the Cross of Gold"

"Leave Your Sleep"

"The Restaurant San Martín"

"Another Perspective"

"The Dress"

"A Woman of the Party"

"Mathilde"

"A False Impression"

"Gala Gladkov’s Exquisite Process"

"Reunion"

"The Beautiful Room"

 

Available here.

 

If only we would take the time to look a little closer, delve a little deeeper, when ordinary life goes awry, we might find the world more strange and unexpected than we ever could have imagined...

 

Following on from Literary Remains, R.B. Russell’s previous collection for PS Publishing, the twelve stories of Leave Your Sleep concern sex and death, love and loss. Russell allows his characters to disappear, slip into alternate realities, or re-write their own histories. They find they are able to do the most extraordinary things, even though they may not immediately realise it.?And who is in control of their actions, or those around them?

 

In ‘An Unconventional Exorcism’, why is a young woman who claims to talk to the dead so shocked when her aunt comes back to haunt her? In ‘The Red Rose and the Cross of Gold’, when an engineer in a crumbling city stumbles upon a messy murder, who cleans up afterwards? And in ‘Mathilde’, what do lovers do when everyone is against their relationship? These and other questions are explored in Russell’s beautifully evocative prose.

 

Leave Your Sleep was first published by PS Publishing in 2012.

Reprinted as a paperback by Tartarus Press, 2020.

 

 

Reviews

 

Leave Your Sleep is a collection that lingers on your mind for a long time after reading it. Because the stories are hauntingly beautiful and unforgettable, and the prose is amazingly good, it's easy to say that this collection is speculative fiction at its best. Risingshadow

 

I’ll admit: I wasn’t able to guess the endings of these tales. And for me, that’s enough to recommend this collection. Hellnotes

 

One of our best writers of unsettling fiction, R. B. Russell, can be sampled in collections from Swan River Press (Ghosts) and PS Publishing (Leave Your Sleep ). Michael Dirda, The American Scholar

 

An enticing collection of elegantly written, strange stories. Mario Guslandi, Bookgeeks

Copyright R.B. Russell, 2024