Joyce Oates
1) Black Water
Author
Language
English
Description
Twenty-six-year-old Kelly Kelleher longs for something interesting to happen to her, so when she meets a senator and he invites her to his hotel room, she says yes. Even though the man is old enough to be her father and even though he has perhaps been drinking too heavily, saying yes is an exciting part of the adventure Kelly is finally going to have. However, after the senator's car crashes through a guardrail, it becomes clear that this man embodies...
Author
Language
English
Description
In the early 1950s- the decade before the Civil rights movement- racial boundaries kept people apart or brought them together in explosive and dramatic ways. Iris Courtney, a young white woman, begins a clandestine relationship with Jinx Fairchild, a Black man who defended her in a fatal street fight with a white man. That one act changes their lives overnight, altering their destinies in ways they could never have imagined...
Author
Language
English
Description
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...
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"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 man returns from the dead to haunt his grieving wife; a young mother finds herself captivated by her own motherhood. In the collection's longest story, a much-praised writer cruelly experiments with "drafts" of his...
Author
Language
English
Description
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....
Author
Language
English
Description
This novel provides an 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, it's an exploration of psychological trauma, class warfare, grief, and eventual healing.
Author
Language
English
Description
"Amid a starkly beautiful but uncanny landscape in New Mexico, a married couple from Cambridge, MA takes residency at a distinguished academic institute. When the husband is stricken with a mysterious illness, misdiagnosed at first, their lives are uprooted and husband and wife each embarks upon a nightmare journey. At thirty-seven, Michaela faces the terrifying prospect of widowhood - and the loss of Gerard, whose identity has greatly shaped her...
10) The accursed
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
When a savage lynching in a nearby town is hushed up, a horrifying chain of events is initiated in turn-of-the-century Princeton-- until it becomes apparent that the families living there have been beset by a powerful curse. The Devil has come to this little town and not a soul will be spared.
Author
Language
English
Description
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...
Author
Language
English
Description
"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 around the world. He also has a loving wife and three grown children and is a well-known philanthropist in his small New Jersey town. But Rush is hiding a dark secret. Under the pseudonym "Jack of Spades," he pens another string of novels--...
Author
Language
English
Description
"From one of the most important contemporary American writers, Cardiff, by the Sea is a bold, haunting collection of four previously unpublished novellas. Starting with the title novella - in which a romantic-minded young art historian is led to (re)discover a terrifying trauma after inheriting property in faraway Cardiff, Maine - through to "The Surviving Child" - which finds the young new wife of a famous poet's widow haunted by the dead poet's...
18) The Falls
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6.3 - AR Pts: 26
Language
English
Description
It is 1950 and, after a disastrous honeymoon night, Ariah Erskine's young husband throws himself into the roaring waters of Niagara Falls. Ariah, "the Widow Bride of the Falls," begins a relentless seven-day vigil in the mist, waiting for his body to be found. At her side is confirmed bachelor and pillar of the community Dirk Burnaby, who is unexpectedly drawn to her. What follows is a passionate love affair, marriage, and family — a seemingly
...19) Mudwoman
Author
Language
English
Description
M.R. Neukirchen--the first female president of a lauded Ivy League institution--struggles to hold onto her self-identity in the face of personal and professional demons.
20) Pursuit
Author
Language
English
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....