From the towering imagination of Joyce Carol Oates, literary icon and author of BLONDE, now a major motion picture, seven feverishly unsettling works of suspense..
A precocious eleven-year-old, in thrall to the mysterious black sheep of the family, climbs into his sky-blue Chevy to be driven to an uncertain, unforgettable, fate. A university student becomes obsessed with the murder of a female classmate as her own sense of self deteriorates. A recent widow grieves inside her lakefront home and fantasizes about transforming into a great flying predator - unerring and pitiless in the hunt.
These meticulously crafted, deeply disquieting stories confront the dangers that surround us, and the dangers that lurk within.
Reviews for Joyce Carol Oates:
'A writer of extraordinary strengths.' Guardian 'Oates chillingly depicts the darkness lurking within the everyday.' Sunday Express 'Both haunting and sublime.' Literary Review 'Splendidly chilling.' Financial Times 'Visceral, psychologically involving, and socially astute.' Booklist
'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
Author
About Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates, a recipient of the National Book Award , is one of the most highly respected novelists, critic, playwright, poet and author of short stories. Her most recent novels include ‘Break Heart Blues’ and ‘Man Crazy’. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University. Her highly acclaimed last novel ‘Blonde’, published in 2000, was shortlisted for the National Book Award.
