Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel

From the creators of the wildly popular Welcome to Night Vale podcast 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."Hypnotic and darkly funny. . . . Belongs to a particular strain of American gothic that encompasses The Twilight Zone, Stephen King and Twin Peaks, with a bit of Tremors thrown in."--The GuardianLocated in a nameless desert somewhere in the great American Southwest, Night Vale is a small town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are all commonplace parts of everyday life. It is here that the lives of two women, with two mysteries, will converge.Nineteen-year-old Night Vale pawn shop owner Jackie Fierro is given a paper marked "KING CITY" by a mysterious man in a tan jacket holding a deer skin suitcase. Everything about him and his paper unsettles her, especially the fact that she can't seem to get the paper to leave her hand, and that no one who meets this man can remember anything about him. Jackie is determined to uncover the mystery of King City and the man in the tan jacket before she herself unravels.Night Vale PTA treasurer Diane Crayton's son, Josh, is moody and also a shape shifter. And lately Diane's started to see her son's father everywhere she goes, looking the same as the day he left years earlier, when they were both teenagers. Josh, looking different every time Diane sees him, shows a stronger and stronger interest in his estranged father, leading to a disaster Diane can see coming, even as she is helpless to prevent it.Diane's search to reconnect with her son and Jackie's search for her former routine life collide as they find themselves coming back to two words: "KING CITY". It is King City that holds the key to both of their mysteries, and their futures...if they can ever find it.

NPR.org

“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.”

Washington Post

“Alice in Wonderland.”

Austin Chronicle

“treats the absurd as normal and treats the normal as absurd.” What they might not foresee is the emotional wallop the novel delivers in its climactic chapters.”

The Guardian

“The hit podcast is absurd and hilarious, and as a book it’s similarly entertaining…”

Los Angeles Times

“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.”

BookPage

“Welcome to Night Vale lives up to the podcast hype in every way. It is a singularly inventive visit to an otherworldly town that’s the stuff of nightmares and daydreams.”

Detroit Free Press

“Welcome to Night Vale” will be hard to resist. Though the book builds toward a satisfyingly strange exploration of the strange town’s intersection with an unsuspecting real world, its mysteries - like the richest conspiracy theories - don’t exist to be explained. They just provide a welcome escape.”

Minneapolis Star Tribune

“The charms of ‘Welcome to Night Vale’ are nearly impossible to quantify. That applies to the podcast, structured as community radio dispatches from a particularly surreal desert town, as well as this novel, written by the podcast’s co-creators, Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor.”

Glen David Gold, author of Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside

“This is the novel of your dreams. . . . A story of misfit family life that unfolds along the side streets, back alleys and spring-loaded trap doors of the small town home you’ll realize you’ve always missed living in. When it says ‘welcome,’ it’s mandatory. You belong here.”

Wil Wheaton

“Welcome To Night Vale brings its eponymous desert town to to vivid life. . . . It is as weird and surreal as I hoped it would be, and a surprisingly existential meditation on the nature of time, reality, and the glow cloud that watches over us.”

John Darnielle, author of Wolf in White Van

“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.”

Ransom Riggs, author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

“Brilliant, hilarious, and wondrously strange. I’m packing up and moving to Night Vale!”

Maureen Johnson, author of 13 Little Blue Envelopes and The Name of the Star

“This small town full of hooded figures, glowing clouds, cryptically terrifying public policies, and flickering realities quickly feels more like home than home. . . . There is nothing like Night Vale, in the best possible way.”

Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother and co-editor of Boing Boing

“They’ve done the unthinkable: merged the high weirdness and intense drama of Night Vale to the pages of a novel that is even weirder, even more intense than the podcast.”

Deb Olin Unferth, author of Revolution and Vacation

“Emotionally compelling and superbly realized. This seductive, hilarious book unfolds at the moment when certain quiet responsible people find they must risk everything on behalf of love, hope, and understanding. Not a single person who reads this book will be disappointed.”

Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind

“As a fan of Welcome to Night Vale, Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink have delighted me with stories that are clever, twisted, beautiful, strange, wonderful, and sweet. This book does all of that and more. I think this might be the best book I’ve read in years.”

Publishers Weekly

“Co-creators of the popular Welcome to Night Vale podcast, successfully expand the mythology of their strange desert town. Fans will find it refreshing to see Night Vale from different perspectives . . . but knowledge of the podcast isn’t required to follow the story.”

Kirkus Reviews (starred 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.”

Shelf Awareness

“In their novelistic adaptation of the eerie yet comic landscape of Night Vale, Fink and Cranor have managed to create an excellent stand-alone book perfect for newcomers while also including plenty of winks to longtime fans…”

Paste Magazine

“As enjoyable and eerie as the podcast”

boingboing.com

“A marvelous book.... Like the podcast, the novel is full of people we love and root for, full of frightening things, and full of dramatic tension that pays off beautifully with resolutions worthy of any great tale of traditional conflict.”

AV Club

“A wonderfully creepy tale filled with revelations about the nature of the town and its residents.”

Asbury Park Press

“Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel masterfully brings the darkly hilarious, touching and creepy world of the podcast into the realm of ink and paper.”

Daily Californian

“Fast moving and sturdily written…an excellent introduction to a town everyone should get the chance to explore.”

Bustle

“This is the kind of book that’ll make you say ALL HAIL THE GLOW CLOUD. Whether you’re a fan of the strange and upsetting Welcome to Night Vale podcast or you’re new to Night Vale and its quaint desert conspiracies, it’s never a bad time to visit Night Vale. ”

Vox

“Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel is easily enjoyed on its own terms - even for those who are new to the town of Night Vale - largely because the storytelling shines so brightly on the level of its individual parts.”

From the Back Cover

Praise for Welcome to Night Vale“This is the novel of your dreams. . . . A friendly (but terrifying) and comic (but dark) and glittering (but bleak) story of misfit family life that unfolds along the side streets, back alleys, and spring-loaded trapdoors of the small town home you’ll realize you’ve always missed living in.”—Glen David Gold, author of Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside“Those of us who have gotten to know Night Vale through Cecil Palmer’s biweekly radio broadcasts can finally see what it’s like to actually live there. It is as weird and surreal as I hoped it would be, and a surprisingly existential meditation on the nature of time, reality, and the Glow Cloud that watches over us.”—Wil Wheaton“Take Conan’s Hyboria, 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“I’ve been a fan of Welcome to Night Vale for years, and in that time writers Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink have delighted me with stories that are clever, twisted, beautiful, strange, wonderful, and sweet. This book does all of that and so much more. It’s even better than I’d hoped. I think this might be the best book I’ve read in years.”—Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind“This small town full of hooded figures, glowing clouds, cryptically terrifying public policies, and flickering realities quickly feels more like home than home. . . . There is nothing like Night Vale, in the best possible way.”—Maureen Johnson, author of 13 Little Blue Envelopes and The Name of the Star“They’ve done the unthinkable: merged the high weirdness and intense drama of Night Vale to the pages of a novel that is even weirder, even more intense than the podcast.”—Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother and coeditor of Boing Boing

About the Author

Joseph Fink is the creator of the Welcome to Night Vale and Alice Isn't Dead podcasts, and the New York Times bestselling author of Welcome to Night Vale, It Devours!, and The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home (all written with Jeffrey Cranor), and Alice Isn’t Dead. He is also the author of the middle-grade novel, The Halloween Moon. He and his wife, Meg Bashwiner, have written the memoir The First Ten Years. They live together in the Hudson River Valley.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.

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