"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...

The National Book Award winning author of Blonde demonstrates her mastery of contemporary gothic horror in these 10 chilling short stories.

The need for love—obsessive, self-destructive, unpredictable—can take us to forbidden places, as Joyce Carol Oates demonstrates with fearsome clarity in this short story collection. In "Strip Poker," a reckless adolescent girl must find a way of turning the tables on a gathering

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At thirty-seven, Michaela faces the terrifying prospect of widowhood... and the loss of Gerard, whose identity has greatly shaped her own. They moved from Cambridge, MA to take residency at a distinguished academic institute in New Mexico. Gerard's mysterious illness, misdiagnosed at first, has uprooted their lives, but Michaela cares desperately for Gerard in his final days as she comes to realize that her love for her husband, however fierce and...

In this work the author offers a collection of 11 previously uncollected stories, including a title piece that tracks the friendship between Elizabeth Short, famously known as the Black Dahlia, the victim of a markedly brutal murder in 1940s Los Angeles that remains unsolved, and her roommate, Norma Jeane Baker who became Marilyn Monroe.

When his failing health prompts him to hire an assistant, reclusive author Joshua Siegl recruits Alma, unaware of her tortured past and the hatred stirring within her that incides her to commit anti-Semitic acts.