Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub

I listened to the unabridged audio version of Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub, which well narrated by Patrick Lawlor last month as a spooky/horror themed read for Halloween. This is the first book I've ever read by Peter Straub, although I've heard about him before as an author for a number of years. I am so happy that I have finally read a book by Peter Straub. His writing is exquisite.

Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub is a collection of short stories. I usually find short stories hit or miss. The stories in this collection were interesting, engaging, and different to say the least. Each story was so different. If you like the horror genre and also short stories, then give this collection a try.

I think what I enjoyed most about Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub was the writing itself. I look forward to read a full length novel by Peter Straub in the future.

Below is the publisher's summary for Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub from Amazon's website:

These psychic and horror fictions - seven of them short-shorts - reveals Straub at his spellbinding best. Two tales (first installments of his Blue Rose trilogy), are linked to Koko and Mystery and exactingly probe the consequences of boyhood clashes with evil.

In "Blue Rose," sadistic Harry Beevers, 10, hypnotizes and destroys his younger brother; the tale leaps ahead to the ironic verdict in Harry's court-martial for wreaking atrocities in Vietnam.

In the outstanding "The Juniper Tree," a novelist relives a harrowing, seductive summer when, at age seven, he was sexually molested in a movie house by drifter Stan, a seedy Alan Ladd lookalike.

"The Buffalo Hunter" fastidiously chronicles the fixations of a 35-year-old who numbs his fear of women by sucking his coffee and cognac from baby bottles.

In the ambitious gothic thriller/academic spoof "Mrs. God," a fatuous professor is lured to a creepy English mansion crammed with grisly secrets to research the papers of his poet ancestress; dead babies provide a subtheme.

Wry and riveting, "A Short Guide to the City" fuses and parodies two genres: the self-congratulatory tourist blurb with a news alert on the "viaduct killer."

I am giving Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub a rating of 4 stars out of 5 stars.

Until my next post, happy reading!!