Joyce Carol Oates

Eight stories from the author of A Book of American Martyrs that display her "mastery of imagery and stream of consciousness" (Kirkus Reviews). Joyce Carol Oates is an unparalleled investigator of human personality. In these eight stories, she deftly tests the bonds between damaged individuals—brother and sister. teacher and student, two lonesome strangers on a subway—in the beautiful, bracing prose that has become her signature. In the title...

In 1965, neuroscientist Margot Sharpe meets Elihu Hoopes: the "man without a shadow," who will be known, in time, as the most-studied and most famous amnesiac in history. A vicious infection has clouded anything beyond the last seventy seconds just beyond the fog of memory. Over the course of thirty years, the two embark on mirrored journeys of self-discovery: Margot, enthralled by her charming, mysterious, and deeply lonely patient, as well as her...

When a fourteen-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.

Six terrifying tales to chill the blood from the unique imagination of Joyce Carol Oates. A young boy plays with dolls instead of action figures. But as he grows older, his passion takes on a darker edge ... A white man shoots dead a black boy creating a media frenzy. But could it be that it was self-defense as he claims? A nervous woman tries to escape her husband. He says he loves her, but she's convinced he wants to kill her ... These quietly lethal...

Blaming herself for the car accident on the Tappan Zee Bridge that killed her mother, fifteen-year-old Jenna undergoes a difficult physical and emotional recovery.

Cherie, a beloved cat, becomes very jealous when Cleopatra, a kitten, comes to live with her family.

In the heart of a Languid July, eleven-year-old John Reddy heart drives a traffic-stopping, salmon-colored Cadillac into the quiet upstate town of Willowsville, New York. His mother, Dahlia Heart, a blackjack dealer, has brought her family east from Las Vegas to claim the rambling mansion left to her by a wealthy suitor. But it is John Reddy--already growing into a heartbreaking hybrid of James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Elvis Presley--who will claim...

Presents a collection of stories that explores the musings of a writer, a prisoner, a student, and others who consider how their lives might have unfolded differently had they made different choices.

Joyce Carol Oates's Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. In Expensive People, Oates takes a provocative and suspenseful look at the roiling secrets of America's affluent suburbs. Set in the late 1960s, this first-person confession is narrated by Richard Everett, a precocious and obese boy who sees himself as a minor character in the alarming drama unfolding...

"Jane Eyre is poor, parentless and plain. Her future looks bleak. Jane's aunt and cousin detest her. Life at Lowood School is cruel and dangerous. What inner strength can the young Jane find? Seeking adventure and independence, Jane sets out alone. Is her new master, Mr Rochester, all that he seems? What secret does he keep locked in the third storey, where strange laughter haunts the nights? In her search for affection, Jane faces horror, cruelty,...