In the seven feverishly unsettling works that compose DIS MEM BER AND OTHER STORIES OF MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE, Joyce Carol Oates focuses on the inner lives of vulnerable girls and women, some victimized, others provoked --- by deep emotional unrest --- to commit violence against others.

In the title story, a precocious 11-year-old named Jill is in thrall to an older male relative, the mysterious, attractive black sheep of the family. Without telling her parents Jill climbs into his sky-blue Chevy to be driven to an uncertain, and unforgettable, fate. In “The Drowned Girl,” a university transfer student becomes increasingly obsessed with the drowning/murder of another female student, as her own sense of self begins to deteriorate. In “Great Blue Heron,” a recent widow grieves inside the confines of her lakefront home and fantasizes about transforming into that great flying predator --- unerring and pitiless in the hunt. And in the final story, “Welcome to Friendly Skies,” a trusting group of bird-watchers is borne to a remote part of the globe, to a harrowing fate.

This is an arresting fiction collection from “one of the great writers of our time” (John Gardner).