Riding the Nightmare

These 12 macabre stories from Tuttle (The Dead Hours of Night) abound with intensely unsettling explorations of the dark side of gender dynamics. In the title tale, a spurned woman’s anger toward her lover and his pregnant wife manifests as a nightmarish entity with an uncontrollable life of its own. “The Third Person” follows a woman who allows her friend to conduct an adulterous liaison in her apartment, only to find herself later absorbed into a ménage à trois with their discarnate presences, which linger in her home. The narrator of “Bits and Pieces” assembles a companion who best suits her desires from the body parts past lovers have left behind in her bed. In each of these stories, Tuttle homes in with uncanny precision on the subtle power dynamics that shape how men and women relate to one another, seen nowhere more vividly than in “The Dragon’s Bride,” a stunning novella in which a contemporary romantic relationship is revealed to have roots in a classic folk legend dealing in traditional gender stereotypes. These stories are all the more memorable and terrifying for centering horrors that grow out of their characters’ most vulnerable moments of shared intimacy. Tuttle delivers the goods. Agent: Howard Morhaim, Howard Morhaim Agency. (Aug.)