Cardiff, by the Sea: Four Novellas of Suspense is a collection of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published in 2020 by The Mysterious Press.
The novella "Phantomwise: 1972" was included in The Best American Mystery Stories in 2018. "The Surviving Child" received The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror award in 2020.
Periodical and date of original publication provided where available:
Publishers Weekly writes: "The four novellas in this spellbinding collection from Oates carefully tread the boundary between psychological and supernatural expressions of the macabre...This superb outing is sure to captivate."
Literary critic Elena Hartwell at the New York Review of Books writes: "Using her remarkable, literary voice to investigate the psychological experiences of victims, Oates requires that we willingly suspend our disbelief and reject realism as a means to identify societal truths."
Reviewer Rob Latham at LARB provides a critical compendium of Oates's oeuvre. Latham writes:
Despite the reassuring settings and tone, readers should be prepared for "eruptions of violence as dark and ugly as in any splatter movie."