Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mrs. God | 1990 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 2 | The Ghost Village | 1993 | Peter Straub | N/A |
| 3 | Fee | 1994 | Peter Straub | N/A |
| 4 | Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff | 1998 | Peter Straub | N/A |
| 5 | A Special Place | 2009 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 6 | The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine | 2011 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 7 | The Buffalo Hunter | 2012 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 8 | Perdido | 2015 | Peter Straub | Buy |
| 9 | The Process (is a Process All Its Own) | 2017 | Peter Straub | Buy |
Straub’s shorter published fiction covers a wide tonal range. Mrs. God (1990) is a ghost story set in England, following an American scholar researching a Victorian woman poet in a rambling country house. The Ghost Village and Fee, from the early 1990s, return to the Vietnam War setting that shaped his Blue Rose trilogy. Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff, from 1998, is one of his most formally ambitious pieces, using the trappings of Melville’s Bartleby as the frame for a story about a businessman who hires two mysterious figures to punish his unfaithful wife, with consequences that spiral far beyond anything he intended.
A Special Place (2009) is a disturbing psychological study of a serial killer and the uncle who recognizes and nurtures his tendencies. Straub described it as an examination of evil’s transmission between generations, and it is among the darker pieces in his bibliography. The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine (2011) is a love story with a dark mythic undertow, while The Buffalo Hunter returns to the American past with a story rooted in historical violence and haunting.
The later novellas, Perdido and The Process (is a Process All Its Own), show Straub experimenting with form and voice in the final decade of his career, moving toward something more fragmentary and self-aware without abandoning the atmospheric density that characterizes his best work.