Rating: 
Summary: Great short stories, very creepy mood
Review: Houses Without Doors presents short stories with incredibly creepy moods. Their creepiness comes not from grotesqueness, but rather, from the very normalcy of the settings that horrid things take place in. You aren't transported to some otherwordly place, rather the terror is brought straight into your personal living space. Each story has it's own focus, much having to do with the type of horror that children find themselves confronting - and even perpetrating. Those who like Stephen King's child-type characters may also enjoy these. The stories are eerie in their familiarity, but work more on a psychlogical/emotional level than they do through plot. Many of the stories are non-linear, a tool that the author uses to great effect. Not only does it add to the moodiness of the story, it also notches up the emotions that the characters seem to feel. Readers who enjoy non-linear story telling will definetely enjoy this book. Those who prefer a plot-heavy and/or super-suspenseful type book may not like it as well. Overall excellent stories, frightening characters, and perfect horror mood. Definetely a book well worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: Great short stories, very creepy mood
Review: Houses Without Doors presents short stories with incredibly creepy moods. Their creepiness comes not from grotesqueness, but rather, from the very normalcy of the settings that horrid things take place in. You aren't transported to some otherwordly place, rather the terror is brought straight into your personal living space. Each story has it's own focus, much having to do with the type of horror that children find themselves confronting - and even perpetrating. Those who like Stephen King's child-type characters may also enjoy these. The stories are eerie in their familiarity, but work more on a psychlogical/emotional level than they do through plot. Many of the stories are non-linear, a tool that the author uses to great effect. Not only does it add to the moodiness of the story, it also notches up the emotions that the characters seem to feel. Readers who enjoy non-linear story telling will definetely enjoy this book. Those who prefer a plot-heavy and/or super-suspenseful type book may not like it as well. Overall excellent stories, frightening characters, and perfect horror mood. Definetely a book well worth the money.
Rating: 
Summary: Confusing, disturbing, intrigueing, ultimately captivating!
Review: I like psychological horrer stories. I like being left to figure some things out for myself. I like,sometimes, to be left hanging. This book of short stories and intermittant word pictures does all that and more. I've read Peter Straub's "Ghost Story" and couldn't put it down. This book of stories moves slowly, at first and I COULD put it down-but I always had to pick it up again because of the disturbing moodiness of his writing. Each story stands on its own but the last, for me, was the best. It set an amazing mood(lush, green English countryside), told a great story (ghostly, mysterious past), kept me intrigued to the end (who's alive? who's dead?), and still left me hanging
Rating:
Summary: Great collection of stories!!
Review: I was glad to see that Peter Straub released this short collection of his work. There are some dark & memorable stories here. Blue Rose and The Juniper Tree are the best of the lot. I enjoyed those especially since they tie in heavily to Koko and The Throat. I was sorry to see that The Ghost Village wasn't part of this collection, but, it did appear later in another of Peter's collections called Magic Terror. The last story in the book, Mrs. God is excellent. Since there is a longer, slightly different version of it, in limited release, I would recommend that instead. There are smaller interludes that divide each story and these interludes make up their own short story as well. All in all, anything by Peter Straub is a going to show what a true Master he is at his craft.
Rating: 
Summary: Doors that go nowhere
Review: Initially, I was excited to pick up a collection of short stories by Straub. But, this has got to be my least favorite of all of Straub's work. Every story seems disjointed an incomplete. I never got a full sense of what happened by the time i finished each story. I kept reading the book, however, in hopes of finding a gem. I came close with "Mrs. God", but again felt let down on the outcome. Each story is too much buildup and not enough delivery. I was glad to finish this book and put it back on the shelf. Despite the positive reviews, I was not impressed.
Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag.
Review: THE JUNIPER TREE is brillant, some of the other stories aren't. All in all, a collection well worth your money. Sorry, this is a short review.
Rating:
Summary: Characters you can really relate to.
Review: This book sure gets very little of the attention that does the newer works of Mr. Straub. I just finished Straub's novel Mr. X. There are so many bad reviews of it I thought I would review his best book, Houses Without Doors, instead. The stories in this book deal with characters who have all the faults and strangeness of real people, in contrast to generic, always-confident mannequins like Ned Dunstan in Mr. X. I have read this book through 4 times and it is one of my favorite books ever. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend any other books by Mr. Straub except perhaps Ghost Story.
Rating:
Summary: Characters you can really relate to.
Review: This collection focuses on desperate, self-destructive characters masquerading as studious, meek individuals. The textures of these lives, presented in Straubs gentle tones, really demolish all preconceptions about introverts. What's most interesting is how their bravery, their willingness to stare horror in the face, is ultimately what is self-destructive. Strange. "Blue Rose" reads like a primer on the construction of a serial killer's personality. And both "The Buffalo Hunter" and "Mrs. God" have protagonist's more bent on experiencing weirdness than self-preservation. Straub excels at psychological horror.
Rating:
Summary: Worth the Effort
Review: This collection focuses on desperate, self-destructive characters masquerading as studious, meek individuals. The textures of these lives, presented in Straubs gentle tones, really demolish all preconceptions about introverts. What's most interesting is how their bravery, their willingness to stare horror in the face, is ultimately what is self-destructive. Strange. "Blue Rose" reads like a primer on the construction of a serial killer's personality. And both "The Buffalo Hunter" and "Mrs. God" have protagonist's more bent on experiencing weirdness than self-preservation. Straub excels at psychological horror.
Rating:
Summary: Evocative, But Never Pretentious
Review: This collection of short stories lifts its title from an Emily Dickinson poem ("Doom is the house without a door..."). There is a sense of doom pervading each of the stories, as the major characters are cursed by psychological maladies (psychosis, repression, obsession) or are forced to interact with powers beyond their (and our) comprehension. Some of the stories end with the characters clearly not escaping their doom (most notably in "The Buffalo Hunter"), while others leave it to the reader to guess at the outcome ("Mrs. God," "The Juniper Tree"). All of the stories, including the interludes, work overtime to produce a dark mood and an off-kilter worldview. "The Buffalo Hunter" and "Mrs. God" were my favorites. The former presents a loner who gets lost in his own imagined relationships and later in the paperback novels he reads. I'm a fan of Raymond Chandler's work, so Straub's pastiche of "The Lady in the Lake" was particularly enjoyable. If I were more familiar with Anna Karenina I might have had a better appreciation for the ending of the short story, but as it was I sensed something bad coming and Straub didn't disappoint. "Mrs. God" felt a lot like Ghost Story to me; particularly nice was the way Henry James and other authors were woven into the piece. I had read "Blue Rose" when Penguin issued it as a stand-alone mini-book in the mid-90's; it's the "oogiest" of all the stories - even the second time through it still creeped me out and made me slightly nauseated. I enjoyed these stories a great deal. Straub can be crueler and more terrifying than some of his contemporaries, even while his syntax and phraseology are more refined. If you're a fan of Straub's or the psychological/horror genres in general you'll likely enjoy this book. Beyond that, there aren't many to whom I'd recommend this collection of short fiction, unless it would be a student who wants to see how words can be used effectively to create mood and transport readers to worlds they'd not likely find on their own.
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