'A luscious smorgasbord of sinister stories whose characters are - or end up being - devastated, deranged or destroyed. Oates writes, with unnerving precision, about fears that lurk within each of us, and her work exposes the complexity and fragility of the human mind. The result is an anthology that is shocking, startling and unmissable' Promoting Crime. 'These lured me in one by one. All were people focused, with a very strong sense of time and place and so very visual ... Groups should enjoy mulling over the way Oates so subtly drops ideas and moralities into her seemingly simple tales' Nudge Book. 'Oates chillingly depicts the darkness lurking within the everyday' Daily Express. 'As usual with Oates, it is horribly readable, but driven by something disturbingly like genuine misanthropy' Sunday Times.