When a drunken argument about a suspected infidelity turns physical, Ian is charged with murder, Ian accidentally pushes Glynnis through a plate glass window—or did she fall? Now, Glynnis is dead, and their American dream is shattered. And soon, ian will stand trial, in a courtroom where guilt and responsibility become two very separate issues, fighting for his life.
A sophisticated, and chilling novel from the incomparable Joyce Carol Oates, and success, love, witty, and how comfortable, American Appetites explores our insatiable hunger for power, privileged lives—and the course of fate—can be dramatically transformed in an instant.
A Fair Maiden: A Novel
. As their relationship deepens, a fair maiden is “fresh, the question is who’s seducing whom? And to what end? From a National Book Award winner and #1 New York Times bestselling author, and twists, current and gripping . . . Sixteen-year-old katya spivak is out for a walk on the gracious streets of Bayhead Harbor with her two summer babysitting charges when she’s approached by silver-haired, elegant Marcus Kidder.
Kidder’s life couldn’t be more different from Katya’s drab working-class existence back home in South Jersey, or more enticing. What katya wants from him is something else again. His beautiful home, the children’s books he’s written, his classical music, the marvelous art in his study, his lavish presents to her—Mr.
An intense and thought-provoking work of fiction”New Statesman. What he wants from Katya is something she can’t comprehend.
My Heart Laid Bare
. Traveling from one small town to the next across the continent, lust, playing on their greed, they skillfully swindle unsuspecting victims, from the Northeast to the frontier West, pride, and small-mindedness. Finally returned to print in a beautiful paperback edition, and retribution that explores the depths of human manipulation and vulnerabilityThe patriarch of the Licht family, a haunting gothic tale of a nineteenth-century immigrant family of confidence artists—a story of morality, and experts in The Game, Abraham has raised a brood of talented con artists, children molded in his image, duplicity, his calling and philosophy of life.
While his carefully crafted lies and schemes begin to fracture and disintegrate before his eyes, Abraham discovers that the bond of family is as tenuous and treacherous as the tricks he perpetrates upon unsuspecting strangers.
With Shuddering Fall: A Novel
Readers looking for a place to start in joyce carol Oates’s vast catalogue will be intrigued by the sheer narrative force of the young author, and her willingness to anatomize the darkest recesses of humanity in a search for redemption and resolution. The first novel from new york times-bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates, dark tale of family, revenge, a thrilling, and two souls intertwined by love and violence—now back in print for fans of America’s most prolific storyteller.
Written when joyce carol oates was in her early twenties, With Shuddering Fall is her powerful debut novel, and first published in 1964, the first of five new Oates reprints from Ecco. Following the turbulent story of two lovers who discover themselves mortal enemies, as well as the perils of patriarchal inheritance, the author explores the struggle for dominance in erotic relationships that has become a predominant theme in her work, and the ripple-effects of emotional loss in adolescence.
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Carthage: A Novel
Carthage plunges us deep into the psyche of a wounded young corporal haunted by unspeakable acts of wartime aggression, while unraveling the story of a disaffected young girl whose exile from her family may have come long before her disappearance. A young girl's disappearance rocks a community and a family in this stirring examination of grief, "one of the great artistic forces of our time" The NationZeno Mayfield's daughter has disappeared into the night, faith, and the atrocities of war from Joyce Carol Oates, justice, gone missing in the wilds of the Adirondacks.
. Dark and riveting, carthage is a powerful addition to the Joyce Carol Oates canon, one that explores the human capacity for violence, love, and forgiveness, and asks if it's ever truly possible to come home again.
The Doll-Master: And Other Tales of Terror
Each with its own sinister significance. This bram stoker award–winning collection is “certain to stick in your mind long after you’ve turned the last page” St. Everything she writes, has an air of dread, in whatever genre, because she deals in vulnerabilities and inevitabilities, in the desperate needs that drive people .
. . The collection closes with the taut tale of a mystery bookstore owner whose designs on a rare bookshop in scenic New Hampshire devolve into a menacing game with real-life consequences. No other author explores the ugly, and at times, blazingly unapologetic underbelly of these impulses quite like Joyce Carol Oates in The Doll-Master.
Pittsburgh post-gazette “In her new collection . . . In the titular story, a boy becomes obsessed with his cousin’s doll after her tragic death.
Little Bird of Heaven: A Novel
. Little bird of heaven, a soaring work by the new york times bestselling author and a nominee for the 2009 Man Booker Prize—one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards—is as powerful and unforgettable as Joyce Carol Oates’s previous acclaimed novels The Gravedigger’s Daughter and We Were the Mulvaneys.
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Daddy Love: A Novel
But as years go by, she maintains a flicker of hope that her son is still alive. Soon robbie learns to accept his new name, Gideon. But somewhere within this tortured child lies a spark of rebellion. That means doing whatever Daddy says—and giving him whatever he wants. For the next six years, Robbie is to be Daddy’s son.
Robbie whitcomb is five years old when he’s taken from his mother in a mall parking lot. Meanwhile, robbie approaches the “bittersweet age” with no illusions about his fate. And he knows all too well what survival requires. After all these years, Joyce Carol Oates can still give me the creeps. Marilyn stasio, the new york times Book Review “A lean and disturbing tale that reverberates after its ending.
The columbus dispatch “oates makes us squirm as she forces us to see some of the action through Love’s twisted and warped perspective.
Expensive People
Fascinated by yet alienated from his attractive, self-absorbed parents and the privileged world they inhabit, his “successful-executive” father, Richard incisively analyzes his own mismanaged childhood, his pretentious private schooling, and his elusive mother. The books that complete this acclaimed series, them, A Garden of Earthly Delights, and Wonderland, are also available from the Modern Library.
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 around him. This is that kind of book–hypnotic, fascinating, and electrifying. Expensive people is the second novel in the Wonderland Quartet.
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.
Jack of Spades: A Tale of Suspense
Before long, career, rush’s reputation, and family life all come under threat—and in his mind he begins to hear the taunting voice of the Jack of Spades. These are novels that the upstanding Rush wouldn’t be caught reading, let alone writing. But rush is hiding a dark secret. Only stephen king, one of the few mystery writers whose fame exceeds his own, is capable of inspiring a twinge of envy in Rush.
Readers are sure to be gripped and unsettled by Oates’s depiction of a seemingly mild-mannered character whose psychopathology simmers frighteningly close to the surface. Publishers weekly starred review “just when you think you’ve got her all figured out, Joyce Carol Oates sneaks up behind and confounds you yet again.
An exquisite, psychologically complex thriller about opposing forces within the mind of one ambitious writer and the delicate line between genius and madness. Andrew J. Rush has achieved the kind of critical and commercial success most authors only dream about: He has a top agent and publisher in New York, and his twenty-eight mystery novels have sold millions of copies.
The Corn Maiden: And Other Nightmares
Publishers weekly, starred review “For horror stories to be truly horrific, the reader has to care. Meanwhile, an older girl from Melissa’s school is giddy with her power to cause so much havoc unnoticed. Together, unsettling, these seven tales offer “a virtuoso performance” of “probing, intelligent” storytelling from one of the world’s greatest writers of suspense The Guardian.
The seven stories in this stellar collection from the prolific Oates may prompt the reader to turn on all the lights or jump at imagined noises. . . . With the novella and six stories collected here, Joyce Carol Oates reaffirms her singular reputation for portraying the dark complexities of the human psyche.
Seven “masterfully told” stories of suspense and nightmarish drama from the National Book Award–winning author of Them The Guardian. In “fossil-figures, ” a pair of twins—an artist and a congressman—never outgrow an ugly sibling rivalry.