“The proximity of love and hate—or at least attraction and violence—animate most of the tales, each a compact gem of unease.”

Oates typically leads her readers to focus on one plot element, while subtly rearranging the emotional landscape, leaving them in exhilaratingly uncharted territory. Spanning the first 30 years of Oates’s writing career, these stories aren’t for the faint of heart, but they’re a joy for anyone who appreciates the work of a master storyteller.

The six stories in the collection show Oates’ mastery of the form, across grisly body horror, experimental reflection, deep character study and sharp revenge fantasy. Across widely varying tone, from black comedy to utterly chilling, Oates is a writer utterly in command of her voice.

The stories comprising Night, Neon showcase Oates’ mastery of the suspense story―and her relentless use of the form to conduct unapologetically honest explorations of American identity.

These are dark stories about dark days, suffused, like most of Oates’s work, with themes of violence, loss and longing. She offers possibility here, too, but only as if to say that while the myriad choices we can make may produce wildly different journeys, none of us, ultimately, is spared.

One or two of these stories are as good as James’s and Conrad’s. None of them is conventional or commercial, the 25 of them add up to a magnificent achievement.

These are small, hard gems, full of the same rich emotion and startling observation that readers of Oates’s fiction have come to expect.

The Hungry Ghosts crackles with tension and wit, and its subjects—the foibles of academia and the literati—are tantalizing.

Here are five splendid stories, imagining five major American authors on the verge of death each rooted in biographical facts and presented in the authors own particular style that are harrowing, heartfelt, incredibly moving, that cut to the depths of the psyche, probing with such laser-lean, honed prose that it’ll take your breath away.