Any collection of Lisa Tuttle's work is undoubtedly a treat: 12 short stories, one of which is a novella, showcasing Tuttle's amazing talent in short story form. Most of the stories display her exceptional skill in characterization, and her inimitable style of multi-level narration, oscillating between description and allegory. Neil Gaiman warns these tales are not your standard kind of horror, if horror at all; he's absolutely right: most of the stories are bizarre, weird, singular in payoff yet so familiar in perspective. My favorites were the opening story, "Riding the Nightmare," a story about parenthood, life choices, and personal desires, that puts into question one's priorities in life by turning dreams into nightmares; "Bits and Pieces," the story that follows immediately after, full of creepy imagery and a wonderful ending, a story about sexual desire and female independence, that can be read either literally or metaphorically; "The Man in the Ditch," an original ghost story with a very unexpected ending; and the short novella ending the book, "The Dragon's Bride," that could have been a novel in itsef, full of atmosphere and a genuinely twisty ending!

Thank you to Netgalley and Valancourt Books for the early read!

"Riding the Nightmare" by Lisa Tuttle is a masterstroke in psychological horror. With piercing prose and unnerving atmospheres, Tuttle drags readers into a labyrinth of the mind's darkest corridors. Her tales are as haunting as they are insightful, making for a collection that lingers long after the last page. A chilling triumph.

A collection of recent work by Lisa Tuttle. A great talent for horror short stories. Most of these were 4 and 5 stars for me. The novella at the end was fantastic. Recommended.

1. Riding the Nightmare - Tess hasn't had the dream of the mare since her mother died. But she's having it again, unhappy with her relationship with a man who has an open marriage. Great writing. A story that gets darker and darker following dreams that bring death. (4/5)

2. Bits and Pieces - When Fay's boyfriend breaks up with her she finds he's left his feet behind. Each time she sleeps with a man for the last time he leaves a part of himself in her bed. Fay finds her perspective of men has changed and she goes for what she wants now. Very creepy with a twist ending that shocks (4/5)

3. 'The Mezzotint' - This is based on MR James' story of the same title (which I've read). Mel finds a mezzotint of a house on her partner's office wall which he swears was always there. This is a bit of a brain teaser and one wonders if the narrator is reliable. A bit spooky. (3/5)

4. After the End - This tells of C. Auguste Dupin's last case. A conclusion to Edgar Allan Poe's famous stories. Tuttle wrote this beautifully using Victorian language, style, and spelling. It's a shocking tale and so fun to read. (5/5)

5. The Third Person - A woman's best friend asks to use her apartment once a week with her lover. When she comes home each evening, she dreams about them being in her bed. Intense. Didn't suspect the ending. (4/5)

6. The Wound - Two male teachers become friends. This is a strange one. I think the point being made is that women are made to suffer pain. (3/5)

7. The Man in the Ditch - Linzi is being driven to the spot where their new house is being built when she thinks she sees a dead man in the Ditch. She continues to have visions of him. The tension kept mounting in this until the ending totally surprised me. (5/5)

8. The Last Dare - Two old friends get together with their grandchildren and tell the tale of the tower house just down the street. Of course, the children go exploring. Based on "The Riddle" by Walter de la Mere. This was really good. (4/5)

9. A Home in the Sky - A short and abrupt story of a woman who comes across a miniature facsimile of houses to be built on a lot. Odd and simple. (3/5)

10. Voices in the Night - A young woman hears voices at night and goes to investigate. A decent story but predictable. (3/5)

11. The Hungry Hotel - A woman is telling of her weekend romance with a musician while her fiance was away on an internship. Romantic and gripping. (4/5)

12. The Dragon's Bride - To end the book, this is a short novella. Isobel remembers nothing about her visit to her aunt in England as a child. Now, upon the aunt's death, she and her boyfriend return and hear her memory begins to return. This was amazing. So much is told in the short space. We get Isobel's background and character development. The story has atmosphere and I was totally fascinated as I read. The ending shocked me. The best story in the book. (5/5)

Overall, this collection of Tuttle's short fiction was just ok for me. I haven't read enough of her vast body of work to know whether it was just these stories I found lacklustre or whether her writing is just not for me. Or perhaps whether the focus of the collection - the connection between sex and death, and sex overriding the bounds of decent behaviour, sense and social contract - just didn't wow me. Perhaps I would do better with her long form fiction - I did actually enjoy the final tale which made up 25% of the book (making it a novella) - The Dragon's Bride. (It's also worth noting here that despite being a huge Stephen King fan, the shorter a piece of his writing is, the less likely I am to enjoy it! This could be a me problem - I look for very specific things in short stories.)



Anyway, the stories were technically very accomplished and definitely managed to cross the weird/ disquieting line. I note that Gaiman says in the introduction that Tuttle writes real female characters and while I hate to disagree with him, I don't think she does. Her characters are slices of a very specific type of female character always set in such a way as to present a fixed viewpoint on the subject. I also disliked the endless pairing of sex with violence, especially sexual violence. Story after story seemed to have that at its bedrock and it began to feel very one note. I didn't actually care much for Tuttle's writing itself. It's hard to explain but if you won't give me a full character I can sink my teeth into, then the writing itself needs to be a banquet or at least a square meal. Instead I was just left with the impression of thinness and dry, flavourless words. Again, possibly a me problem because not everyone's writing will be for everyone.

I did quite like the titular story - Riding the Nightmare. While I didn't like Bits and Pieces, I thought it was clever. The Dragon's Bride was the best of the bunch but still somehow unsatisfactory. I notice I'm in the minority with this opinion however, so if you like weird fiction go for it. It just didn't quite land for me.

Riding The Nightmare had me galloping through the pages, It is loaded from cover to cover with delightfully dark and disturbing tales from one of the best storytellers in horror, Lisa Tuttle.

A secret weekend tryst will haunt a happily engaged woman in The Hungry Hotel.
A picture is worth a thousand words in The Mezzotint, but only if the warning is heeded in time. Home ownership is part of the American dream especially if you are an adult stuck returning to your childhood bedroom but a room in your parents' house may be safer than A Home In The Sky.
The Man In The Ditch is another story of a warning that went ignored when a woman who should have trusted her own instinct lets her husband convince her that there is nothing to fear.
Two old friends reconnect on Halloween in The Last Dare and forgotten memories return too late.
The title story Riding The Nightmare is a chilling play on words when the actual mare shows up at the window for a night ride.
These were my favorites in the collection but all of the stories are wonderfully weird and unsettling. It was also a refreshing change of pace to have so many stories from a female main character's point of view.

I chose to request this one since Neil Gaiman endorsed it and I love his writing. Overall, this collection is solid. Most of the stories are creative and have supernatural qualities to them and tended to deal with marital issues and sex...

The two stories that stood out for me were The Mezzotint, which will make you question your memory and then question how well you know the one you live with, and The Hungry Hotel which was steeped in secrets and lust.

The author’s writing was good and all the stories had an unsettling feel. I know it can be tough with short stories to create endearment to the characters but I think that is an important aspect for enjoyability. It was hit or miss for me whether that bond formed in the stories, but I enjoyed the collection, overall and would be interested in reading more work by this author in the future.

3 stars - I liked it.

This book contains 12 short stories, some I thought were great and others felt really unsatisfying. Some of these didn't really feel like horror, more strange and fever dream like. I really enjoyed the writing and weirdness of each story.

my favourites were:
-The Mezzotint
-After The End
-The Third Person
-The Man In The Ditch
^^ All of these were so bizarre and made me feel uneasy.

the ones I didn't like:
-The last Dare
-A Home In The Sky
-Voices In The Night
^^ for me personally, these were confusing, felt like they weren't finished.

Overall, a fun read of short stories.

Thanks to netgalley and Valancourt Books for sharing a digital copy for me to read and review. As always, opinions are my own 🤘🏻💀🤘🏻

Riding the Nightmare is a collection of 12 stories that are weird, unsettling and bizarre. They all kind of leave you hanging in the end, but in the best way possible that means you’re left thinking about it for days on end.

There’s truly some fantastic horror reads here, with my favourites being The Mezzotint, Bits and Pieces, The Wound and The Man in the Ditch. Lisa Tuttle explores horror, sci-fi, gender roles, and just pure obscurity in these tales and every one is so different and wonderful.

A must read for lovers of weird horror!

This was so much fun!

12 short horror stories that each had their own unique plot and characters!!! Each of the stories were weird but creepy and included sex or death or both.

Each story left me thinking after I read each one and I love horror that makes you go down the deep hole and think. I will for sure be thinking about some of the tales for a long time and analyzing them over and over in my head. I highly recommend reading these short stories if you're a fan of horror!!

We usually always see death, sex, and gore in horror. But, Tuttle and Gaiman have added their own unique twist and fresh look into the horror stories.

Some of my favorites would be Riding the Nightmare, The Man in the Ditch, and A Home in the Sky.

So glad I was approved for this and can't wait to continue to read other stories from Lisa Tuttle!

Overall, 4.5 /5 stars

Thank you to Netgalley and the author for my arc in exchange for an honest review.

Pub date: 8/22/23
Published to GR: 8/5/23

I love Lisa Tuttle’s short stories. They are sometimes gruesome, sometimes sweet, always thought provoking. I usually go to bed still thinking about the story.

Riding the Nightmare began with a wonderful forward by Neil Gaiman and ended with the novella, The Dragon’s Bride.

My favorite was the short story, The Wound. It was visceral and horrifying. I didn’t know where the story was leading me until the middle. A man begins a platonic relationship with another man, but this is not our world, but one vastly different in regards to gender and sexuality. Still thinking about this one.

Amazing stories all around. Highly recommend for something weird and not what the reader might expect.

Lisa Tuttle has a way of writing that causes the story to get under your skin like a 3 inch splinter, tearing every blood vessel to shreds along the way. Each story brings a whole new terror to the surface, at times psychological, at times the whole body type that makes you cringe. The weight of each story lays on the chest like a cement block, each one so we'll written you feel like you're right there experiencing these things you never thought you would or even could. While I have a chosen couple of favorites like Riding the Nightmare and The Wound every tale somehow becomes more intriguing and creepy as the last. By the end I was in tatters but still wanting more. This book takes genres and twists them apart and it chews through the walls of reality into dimensions of magnificent proportions that scares the living hell out of me.

Riding the Nightmare is an absolutely marvelous blend of macabre, dark, and twisted short stories. This is the first book I've read written by Lisa Tuttle, and it was an easy five-star read for me.
I love short stories and each of these are a whirlwind of equally brilliant and disturbing characters- I honestly don't think I have a favorite story! Centering around relationships and diving into the darkest parts of the mind, every story shows a glimpse of the desire for connection and the neverending need for self-fulfillment. Tuttle writes fluidly and the character personalities, backgrounds, world-building, and intense emotions/relationships are all seamless and natural.
A literal fever dream. I loved every bit of it!

"Riding the Nightmare," a collection of unsettling short stories by Lisa Tuttle, accompanied by a thought-provoking introduction by Neil Gaiman, ventures into the realms of darkness and the macabre, earning it a commendable rating of ★★★½☆ (3.5 out of 4 stars).

Gaiman sets the tone with twelve enigmatic words, a key that unlocks the essence of the twelve strange and horror-ish tales within the volume. Tuttle's narratives prove to be a fantastic odyssey into the unusual, leaving readers with a disquieting sense of being slightly off-balance after each unsettling encounter.

The core theme of these stories revolves around relationships—oneself, family, and partners. Tuttle deftly explores the intricacies of human connections, unraveling the unspoken emotions and concealed truths that can lead to unforeseen consequences. Her writing is laudable, skillfully crafting bizarre and haunting scenarios that grip readers, while delving into the depths of the human psyche.

Within this mosaic of uncanny tales, each story stands alone, marked by its uniqueness, yet all bound by a shared proclivity for the dark recesses of the human experience. Some readers will relish the unsettling nature of these narratives, reveling in the unexpected twists and turns that leave them introspective and affected.

While the collection may not be a perfect fit for everyone, it boasts moments that etch themselves in memory. Stories like "Riding the Nightmare," "Home in the Sky," and the exclusive novella "The Dragon's Bride" remain vivid, even if not necessarily the immediate favorites of all readers.

One point worth mentioning is that "Riding the Nightmare" may consist of stories previously published individually in other sources, a consideration for those familiar with Tuttle's earlier works.

Ultimately, the book caters to readers with a penchant for the bizarre, weird, and strange short stories. Tuttle's compilation manages to deliver an immersive and disconcerting experience that will captivate those drawn to disturbing fiction. Though not every story may resonate equally with every reader, "Riding the Nightmare" succeeds in leaving a lasting impression on those willing to embark on this unsettling literary journey.

This is an excellent collection of unsettling, weird short stories with all of them concerning sex, death or both. I enjoyed them all but my favourite was definitely the last story and the longest in the collection ‘The Dragons Bride’. Impossible to stop reading this one!

*3.5 rounded down for Goodreads scoring system*
Thank you to NetGalley and Valancourt Books for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

"Riding the Nightmare" is Lisa Tuttle's new short story collection that comes with a introduction by Neil Gaiman. Based off of Gaiman's praise, I had some pretty high expectations for this collection and Tuttle's writing. She's renowned and known for her horror and weird fiction writing. This collection is definitely for the weird fiction lovers. I love weird fiction but find a hard time making it through weird fiction collections with multiple writers, let alone one. I think Tuttle is a really brilliant writer but I am not sure if this collection necessarily shows that. I found myself getting really bored with the stories after "Riding the Nightmare" which ended up being the only story I really liked. The others just felt way too convoluted and unfinished to me.

I am not doubting Tuttle's gift because it is clear that she knows what she's doing, but this collection just fell flat for me.

What a great time! This reminded me how wonderful a good short story collection can be. So much variety and so many creepy ideas. Recommended.

I really enjoyed each story in this collection! All were very different yet quality in their sense of dread & horror!

i think this was more a 3.5.
i’m really picky when it comes to collection like this one, i find it hard to fully get immersed and most of the time, there’s some weaker stories and brings down the collection. Overall, this one was pretty good. Definitely weird, definitely some unsettling moments and filled with a very eerie vibe.

RIDING THE NIGHTMARE exceeded my expectations while at the same time being slightly unsatisfying. What do I mean by that? Let me elaborate.

All of these tales kept my interest and never once did I consider putting this book down. Why am I saying that I'm not satisfied? Mostly because of the "unsettling factor." What do I mean by that? With some authors, especially authors of what I'm going to call "weird fiction," their point is to leave you disturbed. Not to scare you, (though some of these tales do do that), but to mess with your mind. I put Roger Aikman firmly in that category and after reading this, I put Lisa Tuttle in that category as well.

Some of the stories here are more horrific than others, but all of them have an element of weirdness to them that I really liked. I feel that the stories progressed from the weird to the horror as the book went on. My favorite was THE MAN IN THE DITCH which contained the weird and the horrific all wound up into one kickass tale.

I really liked all of these tales, but as I said some of them left me feeling disturbed, mulling over this or that aspect of each. I've also found that when you think you're done with this, stories will keep popping into your head long after you finish. For me that is the hallmark of a good book.

Lisa Tuttle can write, that's all there is to it. She's created tales here that are going to haunt my mind for weeks as I turn them over and inspect them from different angles. I absolutely love when stories make me think like that, and for this reason I rated RIDING THE NIGHTMARE 4 stars. Though I freely admit that rating my go up as I continue to mull.

*Thank you to Valancourt Books via NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest feedback. This is it!*

I've read Familiar Spirt by Lisa Tuttle so I knew I was in for something weird with this one. And weird is what I got. None of the stories were bad but I wasn't really wowed either. I still had a fun time nonetheless and recommend this collection for anyone looking for something with 80's horror vibes.