Short stories with something for everyone. Some of the stories were good, some were not so good. OK read overall. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book in return for my honest review. Receiving the book in this manner had no bearing on my review.

Thanks so mich for early access this was a tremendous read. An author that beings so much of modern living into the most compelling of stories. Highly recommend this book and will be watching for more thanks

Creepy stories from a wonderful author. Recommend to fans of horror and short stories. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy.

Some of the stories in this collection really grabbed my attention but I struggled with others. My thanks to Netgalley, Mysterious Press and the author for providing me a advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Once again, Joyce Carol Oates has delivered a haunting and beautifully rendered collection of tales of terror, suspense, and psychological intrigue. As she has done at least since her collection "Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque," Oates offers up a generous chunk of short stories that enrapture and thrill the reader. Fans of H.P. Lovecraft will pick up shades of the old master, as alluded to in the title. The book is full of long short stories; in particular, I thought "Woman in the Window" and "Sign of the Beast" were particularly strong. Highly recommended.

This was an intriguing short story collection with a quirky mix of perspectives that traversed the line between thriller and suspense genres.

I thought the strength of the collection was twofold. Firstly, in the title story, Night Gaunts. Interestingly, this was one of the only stories told from a male point of view that I enjoyed. The other was the super creepy Sign of the Beast, with a strange and inappropriate student and Sunday-school teacher encounter leading to an irrational belief in the commission of a crime that never took place. I did wonder if the two were connected, with the facial marking of a male character appearing in both stories (if you’ve read this, am I reading into it?!).

Secondly, I thought the female perspectives in this collection were brilliant, particularly the first two stories. They were wicked and witty and such a clever use of the short story form. Back to back, I thought they showed an interesting perspective on infidelity and how it is experienced by women engaging in it, and women who are the victim of it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to like these stories but for the most part I found them somewhat boring. Yes, there were dark and violent thoughts, but the stories never seemed to have much of a point. I didn't see much suspense or meaning to the stories and finished reading them feeling they could have been much more. Sort of disappointing.

I had high expectations for this anthology of short stories and was left underwhelmed. None of the stories had much in the way of suspense. I didn't care for any of the characters - I never connected with any of them.
If I didn't know Joyce Carol Oates was the author, I never would have connected any of the stories with her. Her other writing is far superior to these stories.

EXCERPT: (Taken from the title story - Night-Gaunts) St John's Episcopal Church was a weak place, the boy sensed. The white-haired priest could not have defended the altar against an assault of night-gaunts if the malevolent creatures went in on the attack and swarmed over it and for this reason Horace did not bow his head, did not shut his eyes to pray, for shutting his eyes could be a mistake, like reaching your hand into a pool of dark water in which (it was given to you to know) water-serpents might be waiting.

ABOUT THIS BOOK: In the title story of her taut new fiction collection, Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense, Joyce Carol Oates writes: Life was not of the surface like the glossy skin of an apple, but deep inside the fruit where seeds are harbored. There is no writer more capable of picking out those seeds and exposing all their secret tastes and poisons than Oates herself―as brilliantly demonstrated in these six stories.

The book opens with a woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, seated in front of the window in an apartment she cannot, on her own, afford. In this exquisitely tense narrative reimagining of Edward Hopper’s Eleven A.M., 1926, the reader enters the minds of both the woman and her married lover, each consumed by alternating thoughts of disgust and arousal, as he rushes, amorously, murderously, to her door. In “The Long-Legged Girl,” an aging, jealous wife crafts an unusual game of Russian roulette involving a pair of Wedgewood teacups, a strong Bengal brew, and a lethal concoction of medicine. Who will drink from the wrong cup, the wife or the dance student she believes to be her husband’s latest conquest? In “The Sign of the Beast,” when a former Sunday school teacher’s corpse turns up, the blighted adolescent she had by turns petted and ridiculed confesses to her murder―but is he really responsible? Another young outsider, Horace Phineas Love, Jr., is haunted by apparitions at the very edge of the spectrum of visibility after the death of his tortured father in “Night-Gaunts,” a fantastic ode to H.P. Lovecraft.

Reveling in the uncanny and richly in conversation with other creative minds, Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense stands at the crossroads of sex, violence, and longing―and asks us to interrogate the intersection of these impulses within ourselves.

MY THOUGHTS: I think that readers of Joyce Carol Oates fall into one of two camps. You either love her, or you don't. After finishing this, the second collection of short stories by this author that I have read, I have come to the conclusion that I am firmly in the second camp.

Oates has a very distinctive writing style, one that I find difficult to enjoy. It could almost be described as 'stream-of-consciousness'. I find it difficult to follow, and largely pointless. I hate to get to the end of a story and wonder why I bothered. There were several stories in this collection that I considered abandoning, and now I wish I had. I won't be bothering to read this author again.

I did enjoy The Woman In the Window, but the rest of the stories left me feeling dissatisfied and disgruntled. I didn't find any of the stories suspenseful.

Just because I found this to be an unsatisfying read doesn't mean that you won't love it. This is my personal opinion, my reaction to the book. Most reviews for this book are positive, so if you enjoyed the excerpt, please go ahead and read Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense by Joyce Carol Oates. You may well be one of the many who enjoy this book.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Night-Gaunts by Joyce Carol Oates for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

If ever a cover would catch my eye, it would be this one. It hints at a bit darkness and mystery and even the colors seem to draw the eye. That said, what I found inside didn't quite deliver for me. I usually enjoy collections of stories in one book. They're perfect for reading a story here and another there as time permits, but after reading the first in this collection, I have to say that I wasn't left with much inclination to move on to the next. I did eventually finish the book in hopes of finding at least one story that I could connect with, but only found more of the same. The writing felt choppy and abrupt, which may have played a part in my lack of connection to the characters or their stories. I also did not find anything particularly mysterious or suspenseful in these tales, which could also lead back to that lack of connection. From the ratings, I realize that I am indeed in the minority here, so I'm going to chalk this one up to not the book for me.

Oates is a mainstay of contemporary American literature, and this collection of her most recently published stories adds to her already impressive canon. They are exquisitely crafted, suspenseful, and at times disturbing due to their incredible realism. As always, Oates delivers pure art.

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.

You just can't go wrong with Joyce Carol Oates. Great suspense that has you feeling on edge at all times, though 'The Experimental Subject' left me wishing for a little more critical engagement with issues of power/race/class.

Joyce Carol Oates never fails to deliver- slow-building suspense, horror, creepy stories that might leave you looking over your shoulder, shocking scenes that make the reader gasp. Of course it is all here as well-read more to discover what make Ms. Oates so prolific.

Beautifully written, but such dark and depressing tales I had to go for a walk and enjoy the spring landscape while comfort eating chocolate.

I have tried to get into Joyce Carol Oates' type of storytelling. I have read several of her previous novels, and I just find myself either bored, utterly underwhelmed, or frustrated with a disjointed, strange plot. So I had hoped that a collection of short stories would be different.

It wasn't.

I found myself vacillating between "Yawn" and "WTF did I just read?" (and not in a good way). Maybe if you are a fan of Oates' previous works, this may be your cup of tea, but it definitely wasn't mine.

I love Joyce Carol Oates, but this was not one of her best..........

Thank you Netgalley for my free copy of this book!

This is a really interesting set of short stories. I particularly like the connection between certain stories, reminding me how Stephen King mentions certain characters in numerous books. While some shorts are better than others, my absolute favorite was The Experimental Subject. It is one of the weirdest and most memorable short stories I will ever read... I wish it was a full-length book!!!

There is nothing that Carol Oates writes that isn’t good. These six (long) short stories are no exception. Themes of creativity and mental illness run through them; a couple have writers as main characters (and libraries); the terror when fantasy and reality, fiction and life (which is what libraries represent), mingle and become impossible to distinguish. One of the stories is inspired by Edward Hopper’s painting ‘Eleven A.M., 1926,’ another is a rendition of HP Lovecroft’s life, echoing and incorporating his demons and style/genre. (I personally liked ‘The Experimental Subject’ best – the longest story in the book – She has such brilliant titles too!). Carol Oates captures a destabilising tension and danger under the stillness, silence and withdrawal from reality of her main characters. Nameless protagonists, whose names are not their names or are allocated with a letter. Half formed (emotionally and socially lacking) and suffering. These stories linked and snuggle in well together; numbers, birthmarks, sin and betrayal connect to her characters psychological imbalance. I was sucked deeply into all of these stories; the open-ended finales leave you bubbling with thought and working for their conclusion. Very clever and so much fun!