Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense

By Joyce Carol Oates

From Joyce Carol Oates, literary icon and author of Blonde, now a major motion picture, six feverishly unsettling tales of suspense.

A woman sits naked except for her high-heeled shoes, in an apartment she cannot afford, as her married lover rushes, amorously, murderously, to her door.

An ageing, jealous wife crafts an unusual game of Russian roulette involving a pair of Wedgwood teacups, a strong Bengal brew, and a lethal concoction.

A former Sunday School teacher's corpse turns up and the blighted adolescent she had by turns petted and ridiculed confesses to her murder – but is he really responsible?

In a fantastic ode to H.P. Lovecraft, a young outsider is haunted by apparitions at the very edge of the spectrum of visibility after the death of his tortured father.

Revelling in the uncanny, this taut collection stands at the crossroads of sex, violence, and longing – challenging us to interrogate the intersection of these impulses within ourselves.

Reviews for Joyce Carol Oates:

'A writer of extraordinary strengths.' Guardian
'Oates chillingly depicts the darkness lurking within the everyday.' Sunday Express
'Both haunting and sublime.' Literary Review
'Splendidly chilling.' Financial Times
'Visceral, psychologically involving, and socially astute.' Booklist
'Few writers better illuminate the mind's most disturbing corners.' Seattle Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jul 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781788543675

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Reviews for Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense

[viviennestrauss · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

These weren't the greatest of Oates' short stories but they were good. The Long-Legged Girl, I just know must be inspired by the relationship of Shirley Jackson and her husband Stanley. The Experiment Subject was one of the most disturbing stories I think I've ever read.

[hubblegal-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The first story, “The Woman in the Window”, opens with a naked woman sitting in a window waiting for her married lover. Is there still love in her heart for this man or has it turned to hatred? Have her feelings for her remained the same?In “The Long-Legged Girl”, a woman has decided to play Russian roulette with poisoned tea with her husband’s beautiful dance student.“Sign of the Beast” is a disturbing tale of a young boy who Sunday School teacher shows him unwanted attention.In “Walking Wounded”, a man working on a well-known author’s posthumous work keeps finding erotic references that seem to reflect what’s happening in his own life.The title story, “Night-Gaunts”, explores the damnation of heredity is such a frightening way.If I had to pick a favorite out of all of these unique stories, it would be “The Experimental Subject”. This is a nightmarish story about a lab technician who lures a naïve, unattractive young woman to be the unknowing recipient of a chimpanzee’s sperm in the hopes that she will give birth to the first “Humanzee”. I have never been disappointed by the work of Joyce Carol Oates and she certainly doesn’t let her readers down with this selection of short stories. They are some of the most unusual, creative, horrific stories I’ve ever read. If you like your stories all neatly tied up at the end, these won’t be your cup of tea. Most of the stories leave the reader hanging but I actually enjoy wondering what happened and letting my imagination fill in the blanks. This is an excellent selection of horror tales from an author who just keeps improving.Most highly recommended.This book was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest review.