All Your Friends Are Here

Shaw’s (One Hand To Hold, One Hand To Carve) collection of unforgettable, ominous, and provocative stories proclaims them as a new voice to watch in weird fiction. While each tale stands on its own, all are united by the title of the book, a refrain (or version of it) that appears in each story; the phrase should invoke comfort and joy, but in Shaw’s hands, it gets twisted into something deeply unsettling. In “Apartémon,” a phone app for making new friends goes rogue, and the jewel of the volume, the original novelette “Ready Player (n + 1),” provides an original, biting, and fun response to the toxic masculinity of the bestselling novel to which the title alludes. The stories feature attention-grabbing first lines and direct and engaging narrations, a combination that allows readers to easily navigate the strange and awe-inspiring space between their reality and Shaw’s imagination.