This may be the perfect book trailer for this collection of bizarre short stories by Lincoln Michel, which might be what one should expect from a writer whose work has appeared in BOMB, Tin House, and The Believer. Notice it doesn’t describe the book directly. It appears to give us a flavor of the character of at least some of the stories in it.

The Millions writers say, “Michel’s stories are often an uncanny combination of sinister and funny, tender and sad. Laura van den Berg calls them ‘mighty surrealist wonders, mordantly funny and fiercely intelligent,’ and many of them will soon be released together in Michel’s first story collection Upright Beasts.”

From the book: “Children go to school long after all the teachers have disappeared, a man manages an apartment complex of attempted suicides, and a couple navigates their relationship in the midst of a zombie attack. In these short stories, we are the upright beasts, doing battle with our darker, weirder impulses as the world collapses around us.”