A woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, is seated in front of the window 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 of medicine. Who will drink from the wrong cup, the wife or the dance student she believes to be her husband's latest conquest?
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.
***
[Beneath the cushion of the plush blue chair she has hidden it - THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW] ***(Head of Zeus, 12 July 2018, ebook, 320 pages, bought from Amazon)
***
Stories
- The Woman In The Window
- The Long-Legged Girl
- Sign of the Beast
- The Experimental Subject
- Walking Wounded
- Night-Gaunts
***
***
I enjoyed every story in this collection. I've already read the opening story, The Woman in the Window in the anthology In Sunlight or in Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper which I got from NetGalley, This is a great story with unsettling and sinister undertones. I've also read Sign of the Beast which I borrowed from Prime Reading a few months ago. It was a pleasure to read these stories again. My favourite of the remaining three was The Experimental Subject which unsettled me with its sinister use of science and some very dark moments. This one made my flesh crawl. Night-Gaunts, the title story is also fantastic, dark, sinister and a little poisonous. The weakest story is Walking Wounded but it's still enjoyable just not as strong as the other tales. Overall, another strong collection from JCO.