These new, recent and reformulated stories by Joyce Carol Oates, collected here for the first time, showcase a wide range of crime fiction and psychological suspense. A young, insecure woman finds her relationship changing as she grows more and more dependent on a man who likes to take her on long walks beside a dangerously roaring creek. Another woman, nervous around men, not quite knowing how to act when paid a compliment, becomes flustered when a doctor suggests they go out for coffee, or possibly a drink. She finally decides that she will join him when he suggests they meet at his home. A man is so forgetful that his wife panics and yells into his phone, asking where their daughter has gone. A woman resents that a colleague has achieved greater success and thinks she ought to do something about it.

A brilliant young philosophy student bent on seducing her famous philosopher-mentor finds herself outmaneuvered. Diabolically clever high school girls wreak a particularly apt sort of vengeance on sexual predators in their community. A woman stalked by a would-be killer may be confiding in the wrong former lover. A young woman is morbidly obsessed by her unfamiliar new role as “mother.” In the collection’s longest story, a much-praised cutting-edge writer cruelly experiments with “drafts” of his own suicide. In these powerfully wrought stories that hold a mirror up to our time, Joyce Carol Oates has created a world of erotic obsession, thwarted idealism and ever-shifting identities.

In this harrowing story based on authentic historical documents, we follow the career of Dr. Silas Weir, “Father of Gyno-Psychiatry,” as he ascends from professional anonymity to national renown. Humiliated by a procedure gone terribly wrong, Weir is forced to take a position at the New Jersey Asylum for Female Lunatics, where he reigns. There, he is allowed to continue his practice, unchecked for decades, making a name for himself by focusing on women who have been neglected by the state --- women he subjects to the most grotesque modes of experimentation. As he begins to establish himself as a pioneer of 19th-century surgery, Weir’s ambition is fueled by his obsessive fascination with a young Irish indentured servant named Brigit, who becomes not only his primary experimental subject, but also the agent of his destruction.

What has become of Marguerite Fulmer? On an otherwise average day in upstate New York, the young woman left her family home, never to return. No note was left, no explanation --- just a messy bedroom and her sister Gigi, driven to dig through the meager clues and discover the truth behind her disappearance. As the investigation unfolds, every subtle bit of evidence becomes a potential clue. The silk Dior slip dress, left in a heap on the floor; the impression of Ferragamo boots outside in the dirt, a trail of footsteps that abruptly ends before it leaves the yard. And as Gigi trails the detectives, she finds previously unknown troubles in the life of her perfect, gorgeous, much-loved sister --- troubles that at times seem to reflect her own.

Two hitmen in a depressed rust belt town struggle with a job gone wrong. A girl witnesses a horrifying accident and carries it with her for the rest of her life. Medical students bring a severed foot to a college party. Five-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Joyce Carol Oates has made a career of exploring the forbidden corners of human experience, and the stories collected here, spanning her first three decades as a writer, are among her most unsettling and unforgettable works to date. Originally published in long out-of-print volumes, these tales have not appeared in any form this century --- until now.

In the waning days of the turbulent 1970s, in the wake of unsolved child killings that have shocked Detroit, the lives of several residents are drawn together with tragic consequences. There is Hannah, wife of a prominent local businessman, who has begun an affair with a darkly charismatic stranger whose identity remains elusive; Mikey, a canny street hustler who finds himself on a chilling mission to rectify injustice; and the serial killer known as Babysitter, an enigmatic and terrifying figure at the periphery of elite Detroit. As Babysitter continues his rampage of abductions and killings, these individuals intersect with one another in startling and unexpected ways.

In THE (OTHER) YOU, Joyce Carol Oates ponders alternate destinies: the other lives we might have led if we’d made different choices. An accomplished writer returns to her childhood home of Yewville, but the homecoming stirs troubled thoughts about the person she might have been if she’d never left. A man in prison contemplates the gravity of his irreversible act. A student’s affair with a professor results in a pregnancy that alters the course of her life forever. Even the experience of reading is investigated as one that can create a profound transformation: “You could enter another time, the time of the book.”

A married couple from Cambridge, MA takes residency at a distinguished academic institute. When the husband is stricken with a mysterious illness, misdiagnosed at first, their lives are uprooted and husband and wife each embarks upon a nightmare journey. At 37, Michaela faces the terrifying prospect of widowhood --- and the loss of Gerard, whose identity has greatly shaped her own. She cares desperately for him in his final days as she comes to realize that her love for her husband, however fierce and selfless, is not enough to save him and that his death is beyond her comprehension. A love that refuses to be surrendered at death --- is this the blessing of a unique married love, or a curse that must be exorcized?

In this collection of four previously unpublished novellas, Joyce Carol Oates writes about women facing threats past and present. In the titular novella, an academic discovers a terrifying trauma from her past after inheriting a house from someone she has never heard of. Mia, the protagonist of “Miao Dao,” is a pubescent girl who befriends a feral cat that becomes her protector. A college sophomore realizes that she is pregnant in “Phantomwise: 1972” and allows a distinguished visiting professor to take her under his wing. Lastly, “The Surviving Child” is Stefan, whose mother, a famous poet, killed his sister and herself. Stefan’s father remarries, but his young wife is haunted by a dead poet’s voice dancing in the wind.

NIGHT. SLEEP. DEATH. THE STARS. is a gripping examination of contemporary America through the prism of a family tragedy. When a powerful parent dies, each of his adult children reacts in startling and unexpected ways, and his grieving widow in the most surprising way of all. Stark and penetrating, Joyce Carol Oates’ latest novel is a vivid exploration of race, psychological trauma, class warfare, grief and eventual healing, as well as an intimate family novel in the tradition of the author’s bestselling WE WERE THE MULVANEYS.

As a child, Abby had the same recurring nightmare night after night, in which she wandered through a field ridden with human skulls and bones. Now an adult, Abby thinks she’s outgrown her demons, until, the evening before her wedding, the terrible dream returns and forces her to confront the dark secrets from her past she has kept from her new husband, Willem. The following day --- less than 24 hours after exchanging vows --- Abby steps out into traffic. As his wife lies in her hospital bed, sleeping in fits and starts, Willem tries to determine whether this was an absentminded accident or a premeditated plunge, and he quickly discovers a mysterious set of clues about what his wife might be hiding.

MY LIFE AS A RAT follows Violet Rue Kerrigan, a young woman who looks back upon her life in exile from her family following her testimony, at age 12, concerning what she knew to be the racist murder of an African-American boy by her older brothers. In a succession of vividly recalled episodes, Violet contemplates the circumstances of her life as the initially beloved youngest child of seven Kerrigan children who inadvertently “informs” on her brothers, setting into motion their arrests and convictions and her own long estrangement.

“Time travel” --- and its hazards --- are made literal in Joyce Carol Oates’ novel, in which a recklessly idealistic girl dares to test the perimeters of her tightly controlled (future) world and is punished by being sent back in time to a region of North America --- “Wainscotia, Wisconsin”--- that existed 80 years before. Cast adrift in time in this idyllic Midwestern town, she is set upon a course of “rehabilitation” --- but cannot resist falling in love with a fellow exile and questioning the constraints of the Wainscotia world with results that are both devastating and liberating. 

Abandoned as a baby in a bus station locker, shuttled from one abusive foster home and detention center to another, Bobbie Gotteson grew up angry, hurting, damaged. His hunger to succeed as a musician brought him across the country to Hollywood, but along with it came his seething rage, his paranoid delusions, and his capacity for acts of shocking violence. Unavailable for 40 years, this definitive edition of THE TRIUMPH OF THE SPIDER MONKEY for the first time pairs the original novel with a never-before-collected companion novella by Joyce Carol Oates, which examines the impact of Gotteson's killing spree on a woman who survived it, as seen through the eyes of the troubled young man hired by a private detective to surveil her.

Joyce Carol Oates’ latest fiction collection opens with a woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, seated in front of the window in an apartment she cannot afford on her own. In this exquisitely tense narrative reimagining of Edward Hopper’s Eleven A.M., 1926, the reader enters the minds of both the woman and her married lover, each consumed by alternating thoughts of disgust and arousal, as he rushes --- amorously, murderously --- to her door. NIGHT-GAUNTS AND OTHER TALES OF SUSPENSE stands at the crossroads of sex, violence and longing --- and asks us to interrogate the intersection of these impulses within ourselves.

In BEAUTIFUL DAYS, Joyce Carol Oates explores the most secret, intimate and unacknowledged interior lives of characters not unlike ourselves, who assert their independence in acts of bold and often irrevocable defiance. In “Big Burnt,” a cunningly manipulative university professor exploits a too-trusting woman in a way she never could have anticipated. “The Nice Girl” depicts a young woman who has been infuriatingly “nice,” until she is forced to come to terms with the raw desperation of her deepest self. And the tragic “Undocumented Alien” depicts a young African student enrolled in an American university who is suddenly stripped of his student visa and forced to undergo a terrifying test of courage.

At the heart of this collection are girls and women confronting the danger around them, and the danger hidden inside their turbulent selves. 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. 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.

In A BOOK OF AMERICAN MARTYRS, Joyce Carol Oates tells the story of two very different and yet intimately linked American families. Luther Dunphy is an ardent Evangelical who envisions himself as acting out God’s will when he assassinates an abortion provider in his small Ohio town. Augustus Voorhees, the idealistic doctor who is killed, leaves behind a wife and children scarred and embittered by grief.

"Why do we write?" With this question, Joyce Carol Oates begins an imaginative exploration of the writing life, and all its attendant anxieties, joys and futilities, in this collection of seminal essays and criticism. Leading her quest is a desire to understand the source of the writer’s inspiration. Do subjects haunt those that might bring them back to life until the writer submits? Or does something "happen" to us, a sudden ignition of a burning flame? Can the appearance of a muse-like Other bring about a writer’s best work? In SOUL AT THE WHITE HEAT, Oates deploys her keenest critical faculties, conjuring contemporary and past voices whose work she dissects for clues to these elusive questions.

In the title story of Joyce Carol Oates’ haunting collection of six “tales of terror,” a young boy becomes obsessed with his cousin’s doll after she tragically passes away from leukemia. As he grows older, he begins to collect “found dolls” from the surrounding neighborhoods and stores his treasures in the abandoned carriage house on his family's estate. But just what kind of dolls are they? Joyce Carol Oates evokes the “fascination of the abomination” that is at the core of the most profound, the most unsettling and the most memorable of dark mystery fiction.

In 1965, neuroscientist Margot Sharpe meets Elihu Hoopes --- the “man without a shadow” --- whose devastated memory, unable to store new experiences or to retrieve the old, will make him the most famous and studied amnesiac in history. Over the course of the next 30 years, Margot herself becomes famous for her experiments with E. H. --- and inadvertently falls in love with him, despite the ethical ambiguity of their affair. Though he remains forever elusive and mysterious to her, she is haunted by mysteries of the past.

In THE LOST LANDSCAPE, Joyce Carol Oates explores the world through the eyes of her younger self, an imaginative girl eager to tell stories about the world and the people she meets. While reading ALICE IN WONDERLAND changed a young Joyce forever and inspired her to view life as a series of endless adventures, growing up on a farm taught her harsh lessons about sacrifice, hard work and loss. Oates transports us to a forgotten place and time while reminding us of the forgotten landscapes of our own earliest lives.

Andrew J. Rush has achieved the kind of critical and commercial success most authors only dream about. He also has a loving wife, three grown children, and is a well-regarded philanthropist. But Rush is hiding a dark secret. Under the pseudonym “Jack of Spades,” he writes another string of novels --- dark potboilers that are violent, lurid, even masochistic. Eventually, Rush’s reputation, career and family life all come under threat --- and unbidden, in the back of his mind, the Jack of Spades starts thinking ever more evil thoughts.

When a 14-year-old girl is the alleged victim of a terrible act of racial violence, the incident shocks and galvanizes her community, exacerbating the racial tension that has been simmering in this New Jersey town for decades. In THE SACRIFICE, Joyce Carol Oates explores the uneasy fault lines in a racially troubled society. In such a tense, charged atmosphere, Oates reveals that there must always be a sacrifice --- of innocence, truth, trust and, ultimately, lives.

LOVELY, DARK, DEEP is a collection of 10 mesmerizing stories from Joyce Carol Oates that maps the eerie darkness within us all. Fearful that her husband is “disappearing” from their life, a woman becomes obsessed with keeping him in her sight in “The Disappearing.” “A Book of Martyrs” reveals how the end of a pregnancy brings with it the end of a relationship. And in the title story, the elderly Robert Frost is visited by an interviewer, an unsettling young woman, who seems to know a good deal more about his life than she should.

Joyce Carol Oates is an unparalleled investigator of human flaws. In these eight stories, she deftly tests the bonds between damaged individuals --- a brother and sister, a teacher and student, two strangers on a subway --- in the fearless prose for which she’s become so celebrated. She confronts, one by one, the demons within us. Sometimes it’s the human who wins, and sometimes it’s the demon.

Zeno Mayfield's daughter has disappeared into the night, gone missing in the wilds of the Adirondacks. But when the community of Carthage joins a father's frantic search for the girl, they discover the unlikeliest of suspects --- a decorated Iraq War veteran with close ties to the Mayfield family. As grisly evidence mounts against the troubled war hero, the family must wrestle with the possibility of having lost a daughter forever.

A kidnapper who calls himself "Daddy Love" has abducted, tortured and raped several young boys. His latest victim is Robbie Whitcomb, who must endure punishment beyond his wildest nightmares if he misbehaves. As Robbie grows older, he becomes aware of just how monstrous Daddy Love is. Somewhere within this tortured young boy lies a spark of rebellion, and he will soon discover just what lengths he'll go to to survive.

Joyce Carol Oates offers four chilling tales of love gone horribly wrong, showing the lengths people will go to find love, keep it and sometimes end it. In the title story, we meet Mariana, the young fourth wife of a prominent intellectual. When her husband's brazen first wife visits one night, Mariana learns a terrible secret that threatens her marriage and sanity.

Princeton, New Jersey, at the turn of the 20th century: a tranquil place to raise a family, a genteel town for genteel souls. But something dark and dangerous lurks at the edges of the town, corrupting and infecting its residents. A young bride on the verge of the altar is seduced and abducted by a shape-shifting, vaguely European prince who might just be the devil. When the bride's brother sets out against all odds to find her, his path will cross those of Princeton's most formidable people.

Joyce Carol Oates takes readers deep into dangerous territory, from a maximum-security prison to the inner landscapes of two beautiful and mysteriously doomed young women in 1940s Los Angeles: Elizabeth Short, otherwise known as the Black Dahlia, victim of a long-unsolved and particularly brutal murder, and her roommate Norma Jeane Baker, soon to become Marilyn Monroe.

Now in their senior year, Merissa and Nadia need Tink more than they ever did before. They each have secrets they could share with no one but her, secrets that have become toxic and that threaten to unravel their friendship --- and themselves. Tink also had a secret, a big one, but no one knows what it was. And now she's gone. But sometimes the girls feel Tink, trying to tell them something.

MUDWOMAN explores the high price of success in the life of one woman --- the first female president of a lauded Ivy League institution --- and her hold upon her self-identity in the face of personal and professional demons.

An incomparable master storyteller in all forms, in THE CORN MAIDEN AND OTHER NIGHTMARES Joyce Carol Oates spins six imaginative tales of suspense.

In her Author's Note, Joyce Carol Oates explains that Blonde is "a radically distilled 'life' in the form of fiction," not a biography of Norma Jean Baker, a.k.a. Marilyn Monroe. In fact, Blonde is perhaps Joyce Carol Oates' most ambitious novel.

In this memoir, Joyce Carol Oates sheds light on the unexpected death of her husband of 46 years. She shares the derangement of denial, the anguish of loss, the disorientation of the survivor amid a nightmare of "death-duties," and the solace of friendship.

A wealthy, charismatic, and controversial "benefactress of art," Drewe Hildebrand disappears from her estate on the Hudson River, seemingly abducted in the night. Her young niece, Marta, found in a desolate wooded area close by, is too traumatized to describe the abductors. A provocative exhibit of avant-garde "bio-art" that includes a blood mask of Drewe Hildebrand is disrupted by protestors.

"Anellia" is a young student who, though gifted with a penetrating intelligence, is drastically inclined to obsession. Funny, mordant, and compulsive, she falls passionately in love with a brilliant yet elusive black philosophy student. But she is tested most severely by a figure out of her past she'd long believed dead.