Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.

Announcing Nghi Vo’s Don’t Sleep With the Dead, a Gatsby Novella

1
Share

Announcing Nghi Vo’s <i>Don’t Sleep With the Dead</i>, a Gatsby Novella

Home / Announcing Nghi Vo’s Don’t Sleep With the Dead, a Gatsby Novella
Book Recommendations Nghi Vo

Announcing Nghi Vo’s Don’t Sleep With the Dead, a Gatsby Novella

A standalone novella following the Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby of Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful

By

Published on April 8, 2024

Photo Credit: CJ Foeckler

1
Share
Photo of author Nghi Vo and text that reads "Nghi Vo / Don't Sleep With the Dead / A Gatsby Novella / April 2025 / Tordotcom"

Photo Credit: CJ Foeckler

Tor Publishing Group is thrilled to announce that editor Ruoxi Chen has acquired Nghi Vo’s Don’t Sleep With the Dead, pitched as The Talented Mr. Ripley meets The Great Gatsby, a standalone novella following the Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby of Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful. The deal, for North American rights, was brokered by Diana Fox at Fox Literary. 

“A vibrant and queer reinvention of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s jazz age classic… I was captivated from the first sentence.”—NPR on The Chosen and the Beautiful

Nick Carraway—paper soldier and novelist—has found a life and a living watching the mad magical spectacle of New York high society in the late thirties. He’s good at watching, and he’s even better at pretending: pretending to be straight, pretending to be human, pretending he’s forgotten the events of that summer in 1922.

On the eve of the second World War, however, Nick learns that someone’s been watching him pretend and that memory goes both ways. When he sees a familiar face at a club one night, it quickly becomes clear that dead or not, damned or not, Jay Gatsby isn’t done with him.

In all paper there is memory, and Nick’s ghost has come home.

Don’t Sleep with the Dead reinvents this classic of the American canon in the same world as Vo’s celebrated debut novel. It will arrive on shelves on April 8, 2025, the one hundredth anniversary of Fitzgerald’s original publication.

Buy the Book

The Chosen and the Beautiful
The Chosen and the Beautiful

The Chosen and the Beautiful

Nghi Vo


Nghi Vo is the author of the novels Siren Queen and The Chosen and the Beautiful, as well as the acclaimed novellas of the Singing Hills Cycle, which began with The Empress of Salt and Fortune. The series entries have been finalists for the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, and the Lambda Literary Award, and have won the Crawford Award, the Ignyte Award, and the Hugo Award. Born in Illinois, she now lives on the shores of Lake Michigan. She believes in the ritual of lipstick, the power of stories, and the right to change your mind.

Buy the Book

The Brides of High Hill
The Brides of High Hill

The Brides of High Hill

Nghi Vo

A novella of The Singing Hills Cycle

Buy the Book

The City in Glass
The City in Glass

The City in Glass

Nghi Vo

About the Author

Reactor

Author

Reactor (formerly Tor.com) is a magazine that publishes original short speculative fiction along with daily essays, book reviews, media news, and more.
Learn More About Reactor
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
1 Comment
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments