"From literary icon Joyce Carol Oates comes a brand-new collection of haunting and, at times, darkly humorous mystery and suspense stories. These are tales of psyches pushed to their limits by the expectations of everyday life--from a woman who gets lost on her drive home to her plush suburban home and ends up breaking into a stranger's house, to a first-person account of a cloned 1940s magazine pinup girl being sold at auction and embodying America's...

"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."--Publisher description.

"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, forcing her to confront the dark secrets from her past that she has kept from her new husband, Willem. The following day-- less than 24 hours after exchanging vows-- Abby steps out into traffic....

Marya was a survivor. From the brutal lessons of an abandoned childhood to the darker, more complicated games of the adult world, she rose up to perilous heights of fame. This is her story. "Brilliant ... thrillingly alive ... stunning!"--Chicago Tribune.

The unexpurgated first-person narrative of nineteen-year-old Skyler Rampike, the only surviving child of an infamous American family. A decade ago the Rampikes were destroyed by the murder of Skyler's six-year-old ice-skating champion sister, Bliss, and the media scrutiny that followed. Part investigation into the unsolved murder; part elegy for the lost Bliss and for Skyler's own lost childhood; and part corrosively funny expose of the pretensions...

"Oates's ostensible diary of the paroled sex offender Quentin P. provides a psychologically astute portrait of the way cold calculation and dark obsession combine in a serial killer to make him both horrifyingly successful and maddeningly elusive"--Back printed wrapper.

The story of two women, Monica Jensen and Sheila Trask, who become friends and then move toward love and "beyond it, arriving at last at a near-fatal obsession with each other."--Jacket.