New Releases by JOYCE CAROL OATES

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 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 the town itself. It is John Reddy who will arouse the desire of Willowsville’s teenage girls and the worship of its boys, the fear and envy of its men, and the yearning of its women. And it is John Reddy who will capture the town’s soul forever on the night a prominent citizen is shot dead in Dahlia Heart’s bedroom—and a statewide manhunt sweeps Willowsville’s rebel outlaw into the realm of living myth. Over the course of thirty years, Broke Heart Blues charts the rise and fall—and the ultimate call to reckoning— of John Reddy Heart, through the myriad voices of those who find him their whipping boy, savior, dream lover, and confessor. At once a scathing indictment of the cultlike nature of fame and celebrity in America and a deeply moving mediation on human need and longing, the novel explores loneliness, and the profound price we pay for our desires and dreams.

From one of our most accomplished storytellers, an extraordinary and arresting novel about a women’s asylum in the nineteenth century, and a terrifying doctor who wants to change the world In this harrowing story based on authentic historical documents, we follow the career of Dr.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 nineteenth-century surgery, Weir’s ambition is fueled by his obsessive fascination with a young Irish indentured servant named Brigit, who becomes not only Weir’s primary experimental subject, but also the agent of his destruction. Narrated by Silas Weir’s eldest son, who has repudiated his father’s brutal legacy, Butcher is a unique blend of fiction and fact, a nightmare voyage through the darkest regions of the American psyche conjoined, in its startling conclusion, with unexpected romance. Once again, Joyce Carol Oates has written a spellbinding novel confirming her position as one of our celebrated American visionaries of the imagination.

This rich compilation of Joyce Carol Oates''s letters across four decades displays her warmth and generosity, her droll and sometimes wicked sense of humor, her phenomenal energy, and most of all, her mastery of the lost art of letter writing. "It''s hard to think of another writer with as fecund and protean an imagination as the eighty-five-year-old Joyce Carol Oates, who is surely on any short list of America''s greatest living writers." —New York Times Magazine In this generous selection of Joyce Carol Oates’s letters to her biographer and friend Greg Johnson, readers will discover a never-before-seen dimension of her phenomenal talent. In 1975, when Johnson was a graduate student, he first wrote to Oates, already a world-famous author, and drew an appreciative, empathetic response. Soon the two began a fairly intense, largely epistolary friendship that would last until the present day. As time passed, letters became faxes, and faxes became emails, but the energy and vividness of Oates’s writing never abated. Her letters were often sprinkled with the names of well-known public figures, from John Updike and Toni Morrison to Steve Martin and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. There are also descriptions of far-flung travels she undertook with her first husband, the scholar and editor Raymond Smith, and with her second, the distinguished Princeton neuroscientist Charlie Gross. But much of Oates’s prose centered on the pleasures of her home life, including her pet cats and the wildlife outside her study window. Whereas her academic essays and book reviews are eloquent in a formal manner, in these letters she is wholly relaxed, even when she is serious in her concerns. Like Johnson, she was always engaged in work, whether a long novel or a brief essay, and the letters give a fascinating glimpse into Oates’s writing practice.

''Will burrow under your skin and live forever in your darkest dreams'' Bust Joyce Carol Oates assembles a spectacular cast to explore, subvert and reinvent one of horror''s most visceral of subgenres. Focusing on distortions of the human body, the fifteen short stories of A Darker Shade will delight, disgust and shock you. From the metaphysical horror of a snail trapped in body of a young office worker, to a women cursed to dance endlessly, her body ravaged and torn, these are stories that confront the inextricable link between physical and mental terror. Featuring brand-new stories by: Margaret Atwood, Raven Leilani, Lisa Tuttle, Tananarive Due, Joyce Carol Oates, Megan Abbott, Aimee Bender, Cassandra Khaw, Lisa Lim, Elizabeth Hand, Valerie Martin, Sheila Kohler, Joanna Margaret and Aimee LaBrie, and Yumi Dineen Shiroma.

From one of America’s most renowned storytellers—the bestselling author of Blonde—comes a novel about love and deceit, and lust and redemption, against a backdrop of shocking murders in the affluent suburbs of Detroit. "Hannah’s unreliable, elliptical narrative is seductive and compelling, like following someone into a fever dream ... [Oates] is in no hurry to trigger the action, dropping tiny morsels of foreshadowing to keep us on our toes." —The New York Times Book Review “Unsettling, mysterious, deft, sinister, eerily plausible.” —Margaret Atwood, best-selling author of The Handmaid''s Tale and The Testaments, via Twitter 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. Suspenseful, brilliantly orchestrated, and engrossing, Babysitter is a starkly narrated exploration of the riskiness of pursuing alternate lives, calling into question how far we are willing to go to protect those whom we cherish most. In its scathing indictment of corrupt politics, unexamined racism, and the enabling of sexual predation in America, Babysitter is a thrilling work of contemporary fiction.

''America''s preeminent fiction writer'' New Yorker ''A raw, propulsive tale of love and grief'' Mail on Sunday A novel of love and loss from the bestselling and prizewinning author of Blonde. 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. Haunting and utterly heart-wrenching, Breathe explores the intense madness of grief and what happens when a love cannot be surrendered. ''A fever dream of a novel'' New York Times ''Simply the most consistently inventive, brilliant, curious and creative writer going, as far as I''m concerned'' Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl

The Stoker Award-winning chilling anthology of 18 short stories in tribute to the genius of Shirley Jackson, collecting today’s best horror writers. Featuring Joyce Carol Oates, Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, Richard Kadrey, Stephen Graham Jones, Elizabeth Hand and more. A collection of new and exclusive short stories inspired by, and in tribute to, Shirley Jackson. Shirley Jackson is a seminal writer of horror and mystery fiction, whose legacy resonates globally today. Chilling, human, poignant and strange, her stories have inspired a generation of writers and readers. This anthology, edited by legendary horror editor Ellen Datlow, will bring together today’s leading horror writers to offer their own personal tribute to the work of Shirley Jackson. Featuring Joyce Carol Oates, Josh Malerman, Carmen Maria Machado, Paul Tremblay, Richard Kadrey, Stephen Graham Jones, Elizabeth Hand, Kelly Link, Cassandra Khaw, Karen Heuler, Benjamin Percy, John Langan, Laird Barron, Jeffrey Ford, M. Rickert, Seanan McGuire, Gemma Files, and Genevieve Valentine.

El libro finalista del National Book Award, un bestseller que explora la vida y leyenda de la gran estrella de Hollywood, la rubia eterna, Marilyn Monroe. La vida de la actriz contada por Joyce Carol Oates, y que se ha convertido también en uno de los estrenos más esperados en NETFLIX, con las actuaciones de Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale y Julianne Nicholson. Uno de los 40 libros imprescindibles escritos por mujeres, según Elena Ferrante. «Oates es una de nuestras autoras favoritas, [...] indestructible, [...] una tipa absolutamente genial. Me gusta mucho, es buenísima, tiene una mirada super lúcida y tremenda; también me gusta mucho el mito de Marilyn, del éxito destructivo. [...] El libro es fantástico, como todo lo que hace ella.» —Carlos Zanón, Babelia, El País Marilyn Monroe era puro fuego, sensualidad a flor de piel, romances turbulentos, pero también era una mujer frágil, asustada y repleta de inseguridades que buscaba en otros —en el ex deportista, en el dramaturgo o en el presidente— ese amor que ella misma se negaba. Una artista superdotada cargada de conflictos, temores y pasiones desatadas; una niña que no dejó de huir y que llegó a burlar a la propia muerte para convertirse en leyenda. Tras una exhaustiva documentación, Joyce Carol Oates redibuja la vida interior de Norma Jeane Baker —la pequeña sin padre, la mujer dependiente de tranquilizantes y estimulantes, la actriz y amante malograda— y a su «Amiga Mágica del Espejo», la rubia idolatrada a la que el mundo llegó a conocer como Marilyn Monroe. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION The National Book Award finalist and national bestseller exploring the life and legend of Marilyn Monroe. Soon to be a NETFLIX movie starring Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale and Julianne Nicholson From acclaimed writer Joyce Carol Oates, the author of The Gravedigger''s Daughter. An impressive and heartbreaking portrait of Norma Jeane Baker, better known as Marilyn Monroe, by one of the best North American writers. Marilyn Monroe was pure fire, raw sexuality, turbulent romances; but she was also fragile, a scared woman full of insecurities that sought in others - the Former Athlete, the Playwright or the President - the love that she denied herself. An emblematic artist ladened with conflicts and fears, with unleashed passion; a girl who did not stop fleeing forward, and ended up cheating her own death to become a legend. After exhaustive documentation, Joyce Carol Oates redraws the inner life of Norma Jeane Baker —the little fatherless girl, the woman dependent on tranquilizers and stimulants, the ill-fated actress and lover— and her "Magic Friend in the Mirror," the idolized blonde that the world came to know as Marilyn Monroe.

“Timely, monumental. . . . Yet another piercing examination of American culture by the writer this reviewer considers our country''s greatest living novelist. . . . It is brilliant. How blessed we are to have her as a novelist in our chaotic, confusing times. Night is spot on for these times of racial divide, as well as in portraying the fractious family dynamic that many of us know all too well. . . . Night deserves the top spot on your quarantine nightstand. Here''s a fervent salute to Oates, our finest American novelist, for this one.” -- Star Tribune The bonds of family are tested in the wake of a profound tragedy, providing a look at the darker side of our society by one of our most enduringly popular and important writers 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’s 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.

Joyce Carol Oates pulls out all the stops in this chilling female-centric noir collection featuring brand-new writing from Margaret Atwood, Aimee Bender, Edwidge Danticat, and more.

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author, “a compelling domestic horror story” of a new bride haunted by childhood nightmares (Kirkus Reviews). Less than twenty-four hours after exchanging vows with her new husband, Willem, 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. Why, for example is there a rash-like red mark circling her wrist? What does she dream about that causes her to wake from the sound of her own screams? Slowly, Abby begins to open up to her husband, revealing to him what she has never shared with anyone before—a story of a terrified mother; a jealous, drug-addled father; a daughter’s terrifying captivity; and the demons behind her terrible recurring dreams of wandering through a field ridden with human skulls and bones… From a recipient of a National Book Award and three Bram Stoker Awards, this suspenseful, twisting tale, named one of the scariest books of the year by Kirkus Reviews, is a “fast-paced examination of the destructive and restorative nature of obsessive love” (Booklist).

The stunning, classic portrait of a powerful man''s downward spiral to moral ruin Jerome "Corky" Corcorn. A money-juggling wheeler dealer, rising politico, popular man''s man, and successful womanizer. It is a Memorial Day weekend, and we are about to live with him, breathe with him, and sweat with him in a nonstop marathon of mounting desperation as he tries to keep his financial empire from unraveling, his love life from shredding, and his rebellious daughter from destroying both herself and him. Seldom in fiction has a man been brought so vividly to life in all his strength and weakness, hunger and ambition, carnality and corruption. Rarely has the complex web of American society been revealed so rivetingly. And never has one of today''s supreme writers, Joyce Carol Oates, written a bolder and better novel than this mesmerizing masterpiece.

New York Times–bestselling author Unavailable for 40 years, this seminal crime novel of madness and murder is a powerful trip into the mind of a maniac—and features a never-before-seen companion novella. “Oates’ tale of criminal psychosis draws on the druggy decadence, greed, sexism, and violence of Hollywood in the Charles Manson-Roman Polanski era.” —Booklist 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, The Triumph of the Spider Monkey is an eloquent, terrifying, heartbreaking exploration of madness by one of the most acclaimed authors of the past century. This definitive edition for the first time pairs the original novel with a never-before-collected companion novella by Joyce Carol Oates—unseen since its sole publication in a literary journal nearly half a century ago—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...

A provocative, unprecedented anthology featuring original short stories on what it means to be an American from thirty bestselling and award-winning authors with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen: “This chorus of brilliant voices articulating the shape and texture of contemporary America makes for necessary reading” (Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies). When Donald Trump claimed victory in the November 2016 election, the US literary and art world erupted in indignation. Many of America’s preeminent writers and artists are stridently opposed to the administration’s agenda and executive orders—and they’re not about to go gentle into that good night. In this “masterful literary achievement” (Kurt Eichenwald, author of Conspiracy of Fools), more than thirty of the most acclaimed writers at work today consider the fundamental ideals of a free, just, and compassionate democracy through fiction in an anthology that “promises to be both a powerful tool in the fight to uphold our values and a tribute to the remarkable voices behind it” (Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU). With an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and edited by bestselling author Jonathan Santlofer, this powerful anthology includes original, striking art from fourteen of the country’s most celebrated artists, cartoonists, and graphic novelists, including Art Spiegelman, Roz Chast, Marilyn Minter, and Eric Fischl. Transcendent, urgent, and ultimately hopeful, It Occurs to Me That I Am America takes back the narrative of what it means to be an American in the 21st century.

“A painful truth of family life: the most tender emotions can change in an instant. You think your parents love you but is it you they love, or the child who is theirs?” --Joyce Carol Oates, My Life as a Rat Which should prevail: loyalty to family or loyalty to the truth? Is telling the truth ever a mistake and is lying for one’s family ever justified? Can one do the right thing, but bitterly regret it? 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 twelve, 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. Arresting and poignant, My Life as a Rat traces a life of banishment from a family—banishment from parents, siblings, and the Church—that forces Violet to discover her own identity, to break the powerful spell of family, and to emerge from her long exile as a “rat” into a transformed life.

An engrossing early novel from Joyce Carol Oates’s earlier novels explores a fraught and perilous relationship between two women Originally published in 1985, Solstice is the gripping story of Monica Jensen and Sheila Trask, two young women who are complete opposites yet find themselves irresistibly drawn to each other. Monica is a shy, modest, and recently divorced school teacher while Sheila is a worldly, sophisticated, and nocturnal painter driven by the needs of her art. Over the months, their friendship deepens, first to love and then to a near-fatal obsession. Engaging, dark, and mysterious, Solstice is Joyce Carol Oates’s psychological masterpiece of friendship and fixation.

"Filled with surprising, exotic, and dangerous treats, is the perfect thing for a winter''s night by the fire." -Washington Post In Mysteries of Winterthurn, the brilliant young detective-hero Xavier Kilgarvan is confronted with three baffling cases—"The Virgin in the Rose-Bower," "The Devil''s Half-Acre," and "The Blood-Stained Gown"—that tax his genius for detection to the utmost, just as his forbidden passion for his cousin Perdita becomes an obsession that shapes his life.

An ingenious, dystopian novel of one young woman’s resistance against the constraints of an oppressive society, from the inventive imagination of Joyce Carol Oates “Time travel” — and its hazards—are made literal in this astonishing new 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 eighty 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 constrains of the Wainscotia world with results that are both devastating and liberating. Arresting and visionary, Hazards of Time Travel is both a novel of harrowing discovery and an exquisitely wrought love story that may be Joyce Carol Oates’s most unexpected novel so far.

From Joyce Carol Oates, literary icon and author of Blonde, now a major motion picture, six feverishly unsettling tales of suspense. A woman sits naked except for her high-heeled shoes, in an apartment she cannot afford, as her married lover rushes, amorously, murderously, to her door. An ageing, jealous wife crafts an unusual game of Russian roulette involving a pair of Wedgwood teacups, a strong Bengal brew, and a lethal concoction. A former Sunday School teacher''s corpse turns up and the blighted adolescent she had by turns petted and ridiculed confesses to her murder – but is he really responsible? In a fantastic ode to H.P. Lovecraft, a young outsider is haunted by apparitions at the very edge of the spectrum of visibility after the death of his tortured father. Revelling in the uncanny, this taut collection stands at the crossroads of sex, violence, and longing – challenging us to interrogate the intersection of these impulses within ourselves. Reviews for Joyce Carol Oates: ''A writer of extraordinary strengths.'' Guardian ''Oates chillingly depicts the darkness lurking within the everyday.'' Sunday Express ''Both haunting and sublime.'' Literary Review ''Splendidly chilling.'' Financial Times ''Visceral, psychologically involving, and socially astute.'' Booklist ''Few writers better illuminate the mind''s most disturbing corners.'' Seattle Times

The first novel from New York Times-bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates, a thrilling, dark tale of family, revenge, 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, and first published in 1964, With Shuddering Fall is her powerful debut novel, the first of five new Oates reprints from Ecco. Following the turbulent story of two lovers who discover themselves mortal enemies, the author explores the struggle for dominance in erotic relationships that has become a predominant theme in her work, as well as the perils of patriarchal inheritance, and the ripple-effects of emotional loss in adolescence. The result is an unsentimental yet sympathetic rendering of a disastrous love affair in which hatred is nearly as powerful as love, and a yearning for destruction is an abiding and insatiable passion. Discover what prompted the New York Times to compare this young writer’s debut to Shirley Jackson’s famous short story, “The Lottery.” 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.

A “sinister, edgy, delectably creepy” story of mistaken identity, murder, and madness from a #1 New York Times–bestselling author (San Francisco Chronicle). Tristram Heade is a reclusive, repressed Virginia bachelor and antiquarian book collector who has traveled to Philadelphia to keep an appointment with a fellow dealer. But when he arrives, his life takes an unexpected and dizzying turn. A train porter returns his lost wallet, but the identification inside belongs to a man named Angus Markham, a gambler and real estate prospector. When Tristram returns to his hotel, he’s greeted by staff as Markham, and in his room, he finds Markham’s suitcase and clothes—as well as Fleur Grunwald, a woman who certainly knows her lover, Markham, when she sees him. And she seems to desperately need his help. At first baffled, then intrigued, Tristram decides to play along—only to discover that he’s not in control of the game. Especially when he takes on Fleur and her sadistic husband and finds himself lost in a conspiracy of madness and murder. If only Tristram could be certain whether he’s to be the killer—or the victim. From a winner of countless awards, the author of such bestsellers as We Were the Mulvaneys and Black Water, You Can’t Catch Me is “a tense psychological suspense novel filled with dual identities, double crosses, and duplicity. It is also filled with philosophical and literary allusions suggesting that this is less about the mystery of Markham than about the fragile mystery of identity. It’s just what one would expect from the celebrated Joyce Carol Oates, who uses the pseudonym ‘Rosamond Smith’ for her psychological thrillers” (Library Journal).

A lonely widow is romanced by a “brilliantly portrayed” pathological killer in this novel by the National Book Award–winning author of them (The New York Times). Dorothea Deverell is a New England art historian working for a Boston museum, resigned to entering middle age alone—until she’s swept off her feet by the flattery of a charming younger man who calls her his soul mate. Colin Asch is swept away too. He admires Dorothea’s gentle nature, innate goodness, decency, and acceptance of others without judgment. She’s nothing at all like the people Colin has met before—and murdered. A self-appointed “Angel of Death,” Colin is determined to keep Dorothea happy—by eliminating anyone who gets in the way of his plan. They’ll be clever kills, untraceable and fast as a knife-slash to the throat. Each one will bring him closer to the woman he loves. And by the time Dorothea discovers what horrors passion has wrought, she’ll be in so deep, so dark, that giving in might be her only chance of survival. This novel, called “a hair-raiser” by Elmore Leonard, comes from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of We Were the Mulvaneys, a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and recipient of the O. Henry Award, the National Book Award, and the Bram Stoker Award. In Soul/Mate, “it is clear from the start that we are in Joyce Carol Oates territory, for the book is stamped with her hallmarks—her complex, detailed prose; her fascination with violence; her obsessive concern with rendering not so much action as the way action haunts the hidden consciousness of her characters” (The New York Times).

A female serial killer reconnects with her twin sister in this novel by an acclaimed National Book Award winner and “first-rate thriller writer” (The New York Times Book Review). Demure Lily Merrick is a dutiful housewife and mother who teaches pottery classes in upstate New York. Then, out of the blue, her estranged sister, Sharon, shows up after fifteen years, seeking refuge from her life as a Las Vegas stripper. At first Lily is overwhelmed and overjoyed. Her daughter and husband welcome Sharon with open arms, eager to help the seemingly troubled young woman get a fresh start. But that’s not really what Sharon wants. Under the alias Starr Bright, Aunt Sharon is the most wanted female serial killer in the country. Driven by a need for love and security, she has sought out sex and degradation—leaving behind a bloody trail of carved-up men in cheap motel rooms from coast to coast. Now, she’s insinuating herself into the lives of those who trust and love her. She’s come home to family, and not just to hide. For her entire life, Sharon has been nursing a poisonous vengeance that has yet to claim its last victim. And very, very soon, Starr Bright will strike again. This smart, chilling novel from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of We Were the Mulvaneys and Black Water is “a real page-turner” (Library Journal). “Recall that ‘Rosamond Smith’ is the nom de plume of Joyce Carol Oates when writing her psychological suspense novels a la Ruth Rendell. Oates-as-Smith has had great practice in limning the type of personality that results from sexual guilt and craving love, and she explores it anew” in Starr Bright Will Be with You Soon (Booklist).

A New Jersey family takes an ex-con into their suburban home in this “chilling, nightmarish” novel by a #1 New York Times–bestselling author (San Francisco Chronicle). Attorney Michael O’Meara’s dogged belief that Lee Roy Sears was innocent of murder has paid off. The lawyer has not only gotten the convicted inmate released from death row at Connecticut State Prison, but also procured an artist’s residency in Mount Orion, New Jersey, for the rehabilitated Vietnam vet upon his parole. Sears is adapting nicely. He’s selling his sculptures. He’s eating well. He has ingratiated himself into Michael’s home; is eternally grateful for Michael’s benevolent motives, however mysterious their origin; and is thriving on the town’s liberal patronage and attention—especially that of Michael’s adulterous wife, Gina. But as Michael’s picture-perfect family begins to show signs of cracking, his suspicions about Sears become violent obsessions. Now, the dreams and secrets of two men are about to collide in a nightmare. And before long, the lines between guilt and innocence, lies and truth, trust and betrayal are bound to go up in flames. Snake Eyes is in an astute and suspenseful story by the National Book Award–winning author of them, We Were the Mulvaneys, The Gravedigger’s Daughter, and many other acclaimed novels.

The National Book Award finalist and national bestseller exploring the life and legend of Marilyn Monroe Now a Netflix Film starring Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale and Julianne Nicholson In one of her most ambitious works, Joyce Carol Oates boldly reimagines the inner, poetic, and spiritual life of Norma Jeane Baker—the child, the woman, the fated celebrity, and idolized blonde the world came to know as Marilyn Monroe. In a voice startlingly intimate and rich, Norma Jeane tells her own story of an emblematic American artist—intensely conflicted and driven—who had lost her way. A powerful portrait of Hollywood’s myth and an extraordinary woman’s heartbreaking reality, Blonde is a sweeping epic that pays tribute to the elusive magic and devastation behind the creation of the great 20th-century American star.

“Oates’ American saga captivates because it exists within an actual drama playing out across the country...Martyrs is a graceful and excruciating story of two families who do not live very far apart, but exist in different realities. ” --USA Today, 4-star review “Successful because [Oates] refuses to satirize or dehumanize anyone, even murderous foes of abortion...With its wrath and violence, A Book of American Martyrs offers this teaspoon of warmth in these troubled times: that it is possible to be wrong without surrendering your humanity.” --Los Angeles Times “The most relevant book of Oates’s half-century-long career, a powerful reminder that fiction can be as timely as this morning’s tweets but infinitely more illuminating.” --Washington Post A powerfully resonant and provocative novel from American master and New York Times bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates In this striking, enormously affecting novel, 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 while Augustus Voorhees, the idealistic but self-regarding doctor who is killed, leaves behind a wife and children scarred and embittered by grief. In her moving, insightful portrait, Joyce Carol Oates fully inhabits the perspectives of two interwoven families whose destinies are defined by their warring convictions and squarely-but with great empathy-confronts an intractable, abiding rift in American society. A Book of American Martyrs is a stunning, timely depiction of an issue hotly debated on a national stage but which makes itself felt most lastingly in communities torn apart by violence and hatred.

This Bram Stoker Award–winning collection is “certain to stick in your mind long after you’ve turned the last page” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch). Includes “Big Momma,” a finalist for the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Short Story Here are six of Joyce Carol Oates’s most “frightening—and deeply disturbing—short stories” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). In the titular story, a boy becomes obsessed with his cousin’s doll after her tragic death. As he grows older, he begins to collect “found dolls” from surrounding neighborhoods . . . each with its own sinister significance. In “Gun Accident,” a teenage girl is delighted to house-sit for her favorite teacher, until an intruder forces his way inside—changing more than one life forever. 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. “At the heart of each story is a predator-prey relationship, and what makes them so terrifying is that most of us can easily picture ourselves as the prey, at least at some time during our lives” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). “Everything she writes, in whatever genre, has an air of dread, because she deals in vulnerabilities and inevitabilities, in the desperate needs that drive people . . . to their fates. A sense of helplessness is the essence of horror, and Oates conveys that feeling as well as any writer around.” —Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times Book Review “One of the stranger parts of the human condition may be our deep fascination, and at times troubling exploration, of the darker aspects of our nature . . . 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 . . . [Oates] relishes moments of gothic melodrama, while rooting them firmly in grindingly ordinary American lives.” —The Guardian “Oates convincingly demonstrates her mastery of the macabre with this superlative story collection . . . This devil’s half-dozen of dread and suspense is a must read.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

In this taut and fascinating novel, the bestselling, New York Times bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of The Sacrifice, The Accursed, and Lovely, Dark, Deep examines the mysteries of memory, personality, and identity and pierces the enigmatic force that drives human lives—love. In 1965, neuroscientist Margot Sharpe meets the attractive, charismatic 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 most studied amnesiac in history. Over the course of the next thirty 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, and though he remains forever elusive and mysterious to her, haunted by mysteries of the past. The Man Without a Shadow tracks the intimate, illicit relationship between Margot and Eli, as scientist and subject embark upon an exploration of the labyrinthine mysteries of the human brain. Where does “memory” reside? Where is “love”? Is it possible to love an individual who cannot love you, who cannot “remember” you from one meeting to the next? Made vivid by her exceptional eye for detail and her keen insight into the human psyche, The Man Without A Shadow is a unique story of forbidden love, a kind of secret, evolving marriage, depicted in Joyce Carol Oates’s tight, impassioned prose. It is an uncanny, ambitious, and structurally complex novel that penetrates the mind and illuminates the heart.

A book lover’s lust for acquisition drives him to murder in this short tale from the New York Times–bestselling author of Beautiful Days. Identified only by the hastily—and clumsily—chosen alias Charles Brockden, the narrator of this story finds a bookstore that instantly piques his desire. He must call it his own; he must add it to his already-extensive collection of bookstores. But surely the owner of such a fine shop wouldn’t easily part with it. Brockden forms a plan to acquire the store in such a way that no one would ever suspect foul play: untraceable murder. And he knows he will be successful—because he has done it before. The Bibliomysteries are a series of short tales about deadly books, by top mystery authors.

New York Times bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates returns with an incendiary novel that illuminates the tragic impact of sexual violence, racism, brutality, and power on innocent lives and probes the persistence of stereotypes, the nature of revenge, the complexities of truth, and our insatiable hunger for sensationalism. 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. In this magisterial work of fiction, 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, of lives. Unfolding in a succession of multiracial voices, in a community transfixed by this alleged crime and the spectacle unfolding around it, this profound novel exposes what—and who—the “sacrifice” actually is, and what consequences these kind of events hold for us all. Working at the height of her powers, Oates offers a sympathetic portrait of the young girl and her mother, and challenges our expectations and beliefs about our society, our biases, and ourselves. As the chorus of its voices—from the police to the media to the victim and her family—reaches a crescendo, The Sacrifice offers a shocking new understanding of power and oppression, innocence and guilt, truth and sensationalism, justice and retribution. A chilling exploration of complex social, political, and moral themes—the enduring trauma of the past, modern racial and class tensions, the power of secrets, and the primal decisions we all make to protect those we love—The Sacrifice is a major work of fiction from one of our most revered literary masters.