Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense

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 fr...