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Remember that girl? The one who was impossibly cool, who taught you how to blow smoke rings, cut school, sneak out of the house? Remember how you turned yourself inside out trying to be just like her--and then she broke your heart?Set in the long, hot summer of 1973, Paula McLain's lyrical debut novel explores what happens when an insecure, motherless teenager falls under the dangerous spell of "that girl"--her older cousin Fawn. Fawn's worldly ways are mesmerizing to Jamie, who submits to a makeover--both inside and out--to win Fawn's approval. But over the course of a summer wrecked with tragedy and loss, Jamie learns that Fawn will use anything and anyone to further her own motives. When a local girl goes missing, Jamie realizes how dangerous Fawn truly is, and recognizes, too late, her own complicity in the disaster that unfolds around them.Paula McLain's poignant debut is a compelling family portrait that explores the darker sides of love and loyalty.

Abandoned by her young mother, unsure of her father's identity, and raised by her prominent aunt and uncle near Boston, thirty-year-old Fiona Range has developed a high threshold for emotional pain. Her recklessness, generosity, and poor judgment have landed her in more scrapes than her affluent family-or small-town community-can tolerate. Beautiful, volatile and smart-tongued (or trashy, erratic, and wild, depending on whom you ask), Fiona hits rock bottom after she ends a party with a strange man in her bed. Alienated from relatives and friends but determined to change, Fiona turns to the men in her life-among them, cruel and unstable Patrick Grady, who denies she is his daughter. The arrival home of her gentle cousin Elizabeth with fiance in tow sparks a storm where past mistakes and current passions collide.

Martha Horgan is not like other women. She stares. She has violent crushes on people. She can't stop telling the truth. Martha craves love, independence, and companionship, but her relentless honesty makes her painfully vulnerable to those around her: Frances, her wealthy aunt and begrudging guardian; Birdy, who befriends her, then cruelly rejects her; and Colin Mackey, the seductive man who preys on her desires. Confused and bitter, distyrusting even those with her best interests at heart, Martha is propelled into a desperate attempt to gain control over her own life.A novel of unnerving suspense and terrifying insight into the perversities of passion, A Dangerous Woman is as devastatingly honest as Martha herself.

A young wife is home alone when the phone rings in “So Help Me God.” Is the strange voice flirting with her from the other end of the line her jealous husband laying a trap, or a stranger who knows entirely too much about her? In “Madison at Guignol” an unhappy fashionista discovers a secret door inside her favorite clothing store and insists the staff let her enter. But even her fevered imagination cannot anticipate the horror they have been hiding from her. In these and other gripping and disturbing tales, women are confronted by the evil around them and surprised by the evil they find within themselves.With wicked insight, Joyce Carol Oates demonstrates why the females of the species—be they six-year-old girls, seemingly devoted wives, or aging mothers—are by nature more deadly than the males.

I Am No One You Know contains nineteen startling stories that bear witness to the remarkably varied lives of Americans of our time. In "Fire," a troubled young wife discovers a rare, radiant happiness in an adulterous relationship. In "Curly Red," a girl makes a decision to reveal a family secret, and changes her life irrevocably. In "The Girl with the Blackened Eye," selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2001, a girl pushed to an even greater extreme of courage and desperation manages to survive her abduction by a serial killer. And in "Three Girls," two adventuresome NYU undergraduates seal their secret love by following, and protecting, Marilyn Monroe in disguise at Strand Used Books on a snowy evening in 1956.These vividly rendered portraits of women, men, and children testify to Oates's compassion for the mysterious and luminous resources of the human spirit.

Oh, how I love a compelling family tragedy! But this whole drama could have been avoided if the husband had just followed my advice--Dude, if you're going to pay for a young woman's abortion, and the young woman happens to be your wife's friend, and you are not--repeat ARE NOT having an affair with said woman, tell your wife about it. It's that simple. "Honey, guess what happened today? Remember your friend Sigrid? Well it's the damndest thing! She called me up at the office today and asked me to give her $1,000 for an abortion! And I'm not even having an affair with her!" There. Now your wife won't find a canceled check made out to her young friend and assume the worst and you won't throw her through a plate glass window and ruin your life. People are idiots...

Aubrey Wallace is the kind of man no one notices. Dotty Johnson is the kind of woman no one can ingore. One afternoon, they both disappear from the small Vermont town where they live. The next day, two hundred miles away, a toddler is snatched from her Massachusetts home.For the next five years, Aubrey, Dotty, and the kidnapped child—bound together by strange love and desperate need—are trapped in a nomadic existence governed by their constant fear of discovery. Canny, the little girl, becomes Aubrey's entire existence. But Dotty wants out. She is tired of being saddled with this fearful little man. When she meets Jiggy Huller, a brutal ex-convict, the wheels of Canny's return to her natural parents are wrenched fatally into motion.

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 and forces her to confront the dark secrets from her past she has kept from her new husband, Willem. The following day--less than 24 hours after exchanging vows--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--the story of a terrified mother; a jealous, drug addled father; and a daughter's terrifying captivity.With a suspenseful, alternating narrative that travels between the present and Abby's tortured childhood, The Pursuit is a meticulously crafted, deeply disquieting tale that showcases Oates's masterful storytelling.

At this point I think it’s safe to say Joyce Carol Oates is my new favorite author, closely — so closely! — followed by John Irving.You Must Remember This is quintessential Oates: bleak, experimental, scandalous. She is not afraid to write of uncomfortable sexuality (I cringed more than once while reading) and careless brutality. And often the two mix.Though I quite enjoyed this one, some parts — the parts focused on Felix, specifically — dragged just a bit. Felix is a professional boxer, and the sport has never appealed to me. JCO does her best to make it interesting, but for this reader it was a no-go. The stream-of-conscious style, while impactful and artistically exquisite throughout the rest of the narrative, made bits of Felix’s perspective fall flat. Though this is not a good entry point for those uninitiated to this writer’s output, it is a worthwhile and memorable read.

In Deep Water, set in the quiet, small town of Little Wesley, Patricia Highsmith has created a vicious and suspenseful tale of love gone sour. Vic and Melinda Van Allen's loveless marriage is held together only by a precarious arrangement whereby, in order to avoid the messiness of divorce, Melinda is allowed to take any number of lovers as long as she does not desert her family. Eventually, Vic can no longer suppress his jealousy and tries to win back his wife by asserting himself through a tall tale of murder—one that soon comes true. In this complex portrayal of a dangerous psychosis emerging in the most unlikely of places, Highsmith examines the chilling reality behind the idyllic facade of American suburban life.

An Otto Penzler BookIn the suspenseful “Strip Poker,” a reckless adolescent girl must find a way of turning the tables on a gathering of increasingly threatening young men—Can she “outplay” them? In the award-winning “Smother!” a young woman’s nightmare memory of childhood brings trouble on her professor-mother—Which of them will “win”? In “Split/Brain” a woman who has blundered into a lethal situation confronts the possibility of saving herself—Will she take it? In “The First Husband,” a jealous man discovers that his wife seems to have lied about her first marriage, and exacts a cruel revenge, years after the fact. In these and other powerful tales, children veer beyond their parents’ control, wives and husbands wake up to find that they hardly know each other, haunted pasts intrude upon uncertain futures, and those who bring us the most harm may be the nearest at hand.In ten razor-sharp stories, National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates shows that the most deadly mysteries often begin at home.

God, JCO. I do love you. I wanted this book to be epic. There were times, mostly in the first half, where I genuinely believed this was going to be a brilliant novel. There were times when I just couldn't put it down—when I got so wrapped up in schemes and reveals and characters' motivations that I would whip through 50 pages in one sitting (a lot for me, for those of you tsk-tsking). But every time I hit one of these 50-page runs, they were eventually followed by another 50 pages that took me weeks to get through. I started this novel in August and finished in December. There were times when I was convinced I would finish by the end of the week, and then I would hit one of these dull, flowery, passionless—for all its pretense of passion—periods of the book and I would begin to think I wouldn't finish at all.How could a 500+ page novel called My Heart Laid Bare leave me so unmoved? I suppose the answer is that none of these hearts laid bare were human. Who doesn't identify with base desires, greed, self-adulation? Not one of us can deny experiencing these feelings. But everyone in this novel was beautiful, talented, charming, extraneously cunning—everyone was so extreme in their movements and thoughts that they, even with their human flaws, ceased to be human at all. It didn't help that I simultaneously read Anna Karenina with this novel—now there was a novel about hearts laid bare. And this is probably on me, I admit, but I found the magical/mystical passages utterly incomprehensible and lacking any contribution to the plot. Sarah Licht meant nothing to me and I found it hard to relate her story to any of the characters, or to divine the significance of her at all.The style also wore thin quickly. I know JCO is an author with many hats, but her adoption of this flowery, period-appropriate style seemed the opposite of ingenuity. I was aware the entire time I was reading this that this was not JCO's natural voice. Which sounds like a ridiculous thing to say, maybe—a ton (maybe even the majority) of great writers do not write in their natural voice - but the difference was how aware of it I was while reading. My Heart Laid Bare is beautiful, deep, and passionate on its surface, but I was left unmoved once I found there was nothing below. I liked the book on its surface—hence the three-star "liked it" rating—but nothing more, which is a shame for a book of such length.

A literary chameleon, Stephen Dobyns is as well known for his poetry as he his for his taut and chilling mysteries. The two disciplines collide in The Church of Dead Girls, a lyrical novel that inspired Stephen King to comment, "If ever there was a tale for a moonless night, a high wind and a creaking floor, this is it ... I don't expect to read a more frightening novel this year." Aurelius is a drowsy bedroom community in upstate New York that is rocked by a vicious, seemingly random killing. A woman is found murdered in her bed, her left hand missing. Just when the grisly details begin to fade, a young girl vanishes. The only clue: a bag with the girl's washed and folded clothes and a mannequin's left hand. Soon two more girls disappear, and when clues remain elusive, conjecture and rumour take over. The town awakens to a nightmare of suspicion and vigilantism. As the killer spirals in to kill again, the town spins out of control, and The Church of Dead Girls heads to a jolting conclusion. It'll give you goosebumps even if you read it at the beach.

Second Nature tells the story of a suburban woman, Robin Moore, who discovers her own free spirit through a stranger she brings home to her perfectly ordered neighborhood. As Robin impulsively draws this beautiful, uncivilized man into her world-meanwhile coping with divorce and a troubled teenage son-she begins to question her wisdom and doubt her own heart, and ultimately she changes her ideas about love and humanity.

Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. Spanning from the Great Depression to the turbulent Vietnam War era, Wonderland is the epic account of Jesse Vogel, a boy who emerged from a family tragedy with his life spared but his world torn apart. Orphaned after watching his father murder his entire family, Jesse embarks on a personal odyssey that takes him from a Dickensian foster home to college and graduate school to the pinnacle of the medical profession. As an adult, Jesse must summon the strength to reach across the “generation gap” and rescue his endangered teenaged daughter, who has fallen into the drug-infused 1960s counterculture. Hailed by Library Journal as “the greatest of Oates’s novels,” Wonderland is the capstone of a magnificent literary excursion that plunges beneath the glossy surface of American life. Wonderland is the final novel in Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series, A Garden of Earthly Delights, Expensive People, and them, are also available from the Modern Library.JFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here.Joyce Carol Oates adds to her extraordinary body of work with this stunning novel of violence and love. At the heart of the story are two people, Iris Courtney, who is white, and handsome Jinx Fairchild, the black basketball player who, in protecting Iris, kills a white man.Iris is the only witness to the crime.The two of them are growing up in the early 1950s in a New York industrial town where racial boundaries keep people apart - or bring them together in explosive scenes of fear or desire. The secret link between Iris and Jinx is not only their attraction to each other, but a murder...and a bond of passion and guilt is formed between them. How this one irrevocable, tragic act shapes their lives and alters their destinies becomes Joyce Carol Oate's finest, emotion-packed novel - a work the critics are calling a masterpiece, the best work of America's best writer of contemporary realism.

From the New York Times bestselling author Meg Wolitzer, a “devastatingly on target” (Elle) novel about a young woman's accidental death and its effect on her family and friends.For years, Sara Swerdlow was transported by an unfettered sense of immortality. Floating along on loving friendships and the adoration of her mother, Natalie, Sara's notion of death was entirely alien to her existence. But when a summer night's drive out for ice cream ends in tragedy, thirty-year-old Sara—"held aloft and shimmering for years"—finally lands.Mining the intricate relationship between love and mourning, acclaimed novelist Meg Wolitzer explores a single, overriding question: who, finally, "owns" the excruciating loss of this young woman—her mother or her closest friends? Depicting the aftermath of Sara's shocking death with piercing humor and shattering realism, Surrender, Dorothy is the luminously thoughtful, deeply moving exploration of what it is to be a mother and a friend, and, above all, what it takes to heal from unthinkable loss.

I am intrigued with Joyce Maynard. Her personal story is so interesting, she is brutally honest and is not afraid to push the boundaries of topical and personal issues. I have asked my public library to add her memoir, At Home in the World, as I can't locate it in any libraries here in Australia. This is a literary read, but of most interest to me is the fact that she wanted to explore the issues of fidelity, sexual obsession, ambition, and violence and the role that pop culture in the form of media and magazines play a part in this. How far would one go for gratification and self-fulfilment, and ultimately, love. While reading this book I looked her up online, so easy to do of course, and there is so much to this author to discover. I love that the main character in this story, as crazy and self absorbed as she is, states that she'd like the girl that just married Tom Cruise, but forgets her name?.. to play her in the movie of her life. Nicole Kidman plays her in the late 90's movie version of the book.Now I've re piqued my interest in the movie, so will watch it again soon. Joyce makes a cameo as the main character's lawyer, carrying her mother's ashes as her mum always wanted her to be on the big screen. A worthwhile and interesting read!