Showing results by author "Joyce Carol Oates" in All Categories

Ian and Glynnis McCullough, intelligent, professional, and successful, are the envy of their affluent friends. But suddenly, an unexpected plea for help and a cancelled check send their tranquility spinning out of control.

In her inimitable style, Oates takes the listener on journeys through small American towns and the biggest urban sprawls. Tales of loss, grief, and violent ends; murder or the slow decay of time; failed relationships between children and parents, lovers or spouses. Characters face dark secrets or their own consciences; Oates takes the listener between the courtroom, the hospital, and the wilderness of upstate New York with deft skill as she presents this tantalising collection of the macabre and mysterious, the suspenseful and the sublime.

This second volume of a must-listen collection contains 15 bibliomysteries by best-selling and award-winning authors.

Los Mulvaney son un ejemplo de familia feliz. El padre es un hombre apuesto, trabajador y sensato; la madre, una mujer encantadora y dicharachera, y los hijos, Mike, Patrick, Marianne y Judd, el broche de oro a un matrimonio idílico. Viven en High Point Farm, una granja de ensueño que será su infierno a partir del día de San Valentín de 1976, cuando un oscuro suceso cambia por completo la vida de Marianne, y los Mulvaney inician su declive. El narrador de la historia es Judd, periodista y el menor de los hijos, quien revela la verdad de su familia y de un país entero.

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.

Many kids write stories, but only a few of them grow up to be successful authors. Before there was Carrie, there was "Johnathan and the Witchs." And before there was Rabbit Angstrom, Toyota dealer, there was Manuel Cirarro, famous detective. Could we have seen the seeds of success in Stephen King's and John Updike's juvenilia? These young writers are the same people who dominated the best seller lists and occupy the most celebrated spots on bookshelves in our stores, libraries, and homes.

Bad things have been happening since Mia began to mature. Her dad left. Boys at school can’t keep their hands to themselves. A lecherous stepfather has moved in. Her only refuge is an abandoned lot on her suburban cul-de-sac, crawling with feral felines - one of which follows Mia home. Ghostly white and affectionate, she is Mia’s new companion and - as Mia’s tormenters will soon discover - her fierce protector.

Joyce Carol Oates assembles an outstanding cast of authors—including Margaret Atwood, Tananarive Due, and Megan Abbott—to explore, subvert, and reinvent one of the most vital subgenres of horror.

Five thrilling tales of mystery, mayhem, and murder from an exceptional quintet of Edgar, CWA Dagger, and National Book Award winners.

Listeners know that few authors are able to create an atmosphere of unease and terror as well as Oates, a fact confirmed by the four novellas presented here. All the novellas in this collection revolve around the theme of love gone wrong - horribly, shockingly wrong.

The much-anticipated reissue of a novel that is one of Joyce Carol Oates’s personal favorites among her oeuvre; featuring a new afterword by Oates 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...

A compilation of classic tales by great American writers performed by terrific actors, with a lineup including Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award winners, and PEN Award winners.

A new collection of critical and personal essays on the writing life, from National Book Award winning and New York Times bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates. Why do we write? With this question, Joyce Carol Oates, in this new collection of seminal essays and criticism, begins an...

A powerful reckoning over the people we might have been if we’d chosen a different path, from a master of the short story In this stirring, reflective collection of short stories, Joyce Carol Oates ponders alternate destinies: the other lives we might have led if we’d made different choices...

The Key and Tone Clusters are two one-act plays by 2009 Man Booker Nominee Joyce Carol Oates. The Key is a hilariously perverse encounter between a vacationing suburban housewife, recently separated from her husband, and a prosperous businessman. Tone Cluster is a chilling comedy that takes the form of an interview between a middle-aged, middle-class American couple and the media.

In the title story, a white aspiring professor is convinced she is being followed. No need to panic - she has a handgun stowed away in her purse, just in case. But when she turns to confront her black male shadow, the situation isn't what she expects. In "The Rescuer" a promising graduate student detours to inner-city Trenton, New Jersey, to save her brother from a downward spiral. But she soon finds out there may be more to his world than to hers.

An eerie, unforgettable story of power, loss, and family curses in early 20th century Princeton. Princeton, New Jersey at the turn of the 20th century: soon-to-be commander-in-chief Woodrow Wilson is president of Princeton University. On a neighbouring farm, muck-raking novelist Upton Sinclair...

When a recklessly idealistic girl in a dystopian future society dares to test the perimeters of her tightly controlled world, she 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 she falls in love with a fellow exile and starts to question the constraints of her new existence, with results that are both devastating and liberating. 

Michaela and her husband have moved to the starkly beautiful but uncanny landscape of New Mexico, to take up an academic residency. But when Gerard is struck by a fatal illness, their life begins to resemble a nightmare. At thirty-seven, Michaela must first face the terrifying prospect of widowhood, then the chaos of the days when Gerard is gone. 

Marguerite has disappeared from her small town in upstate New York. But was foul play involved? Did she merely get away for fun? Or did she finally make the decision to leave behind her claustrophobic life of limited opportunities? Her younger sister Gigi wonders if the flimsy silk Dior dress, so casually abandoned on the floor, is a clue to Marguerite's having seemingly vanished. The police examine the footprints made by her Ferragamo boots leaving the house, ending abruptly, and puzzle over how that can help lead to her.