Joyce Carol Oates
Author
Language
English
Formats
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."--Publisher.
Author
Language
English
Description
When a woman mysteriously vanishes, her sister must tally up the clues to discover her fate. Marguerite, a beautiful woman, has disappeared from her small town in Upstate New York. But is foul play involved? Or did she merely take an opportunity to get away for fun, or 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...
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....
4) The accursed
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
In 20th century Princeton, New Jersey, a powerful curse, which besets the wealthiest of families, causes the disappearance of a young bride, and when her brother sets out to find her, he crosses paths with the town's most formidable people, including Grover Cleveland and Upton Sinclair.
5) Babysitter
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"In the waning days of the 1970s, the lives of several residents of Detroit and its affluent white suburbs are drawn together following the disappearance of yet another child. Hannah, a wife and mother, begins an affair with a darkly charismatic stranger; Mikey, a young street hustler, finds himself on an unexpected mission to rectify injustice; and then there's the child serial killer known as Babysitter, an enigmatic and elusive figure at the periphery...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A family of six disintegrates after a daughter is raped by a high-school student. It happens to the wealthy Mulvaneys in upstate New York. The disgrace--there is some question if it was rape--sends the father to drink and financial ruin, the girl leaves home, the others follow. By the author of What I Lived For.
Author
Publisher
Ecco
Pub. Date
[2012]
Language
English
Description
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. In each of these stories the author explores the menace that lurks at the edge of and intrudes upon even the seemingly...
Author
Pub. Date
[2021]
Language
English
Formats
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...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"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...
Author
Pub. Date
2018.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"The book opens with a woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, seated in front of the window in an apartment she cannot, on her own, afford. In this exquisitely tense narrative reimagining of Edward Hopper's Eleven A.M., 1926, the reader enters the minds of both the woman and her married lover, each consumed by alternating thoughts of disgust and arousal, as he rushes, amorously, murderously, to her door. In "The Long-Legged Girl," an aging,...
Author
Publisher
Ecco
Pub. Date
2004.
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 perfect...
Author
Publisher
The Mysterious Press
Pub. Date
2020.
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...
Author
Publisher
Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Pub. Date
2019.
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....
15) Daddy love
Author
Publisher
Mysterious Press
Pub. Date
2013.
Language
English
Description
Kidnapping a latest victim in a string of young boys he tortures and rapes, a self-styled preacher confines the child in a small box and gradually brainwashes him over subsequent years into believing that they are father and son; while the boy's mother, who was savagely injured during the abduction, clings to hope that her son is alive.
Author
Publisher
Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Pub. Date
[2015]
Language
English
Description
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.
Author
Publisher
The Mysterious Press
Pub. Date
[2013]
Language
English
Description
Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most prominent writers of her generation, and she is fearless when exploring the most disturbing corners of human nature. In Evil Eye, Oates offers four chilling tales of love gone horribly wrong, showing the lengths people will go to find love, keep it, and sometimes end it. In "Evil Eye," we meet Mariana, the young 4th wife of a prominent intellectual. When her husband's brazen first wife visits one night, Mariana...
Author
Publisher
Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Pub. Date
[2021]
Language
English
Description
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.
Author
Publisher
Ecco Press
Pub. Date
2009.
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7 - AR Pts: 25
Language
English
Description
When a young wife and mother named Zoe Kruller is found brutally murdered, the Sparta police target two primary suspects, her estranged husband, Delray Kruller, and her longtime lover, Eddy Diehl. In turn, the Krullers' son, Aaron, and Eddy Diehl's daughter, Krista, become obsessed with each other, each believing the other's father is guilty until they meet again as adults, ready to exorcise the ghosts of the past and come to terms with their legacy...