Showing results by author "Joyce Carol Oates" in All Categories

As detective Xavier Kilgarvan sorts through clues and rumors, facts and fantasy, he is united with his beloved Perdita in a perilous challenge - the case of The Bloodstained Bridal Gown. Twelve years after solving the mystery of The Devil’s Half Acre, Xavier has received an urgent plea for help. A young minister and a woman from his parish have been murdered. Their torn bodies are found in an oddly suggestive position: leaning tenderly upon each other on a sofa in the rectory. Yet something even stranger is discovered upstairs....

After more than a decade, the handsome amateur detective Xavier Kilgarvan has returned to Winterthurn just in time to see the fifth young woman’s body carried from Devil’s Half Acre. A brutal fiend has left her mutilated body in this desolate plot of land filled with hulking boulders, quicksand, and twisted trees. Can detective Kilgarvan discover the forces motivating the mysterious “Gentleman Suitor” who has lured five innocent women to their deaths?

Joyce Carol Oates paints a haunting tapestry of American life in 22 short stories that take the listener from tempestuous inner cities to isolated rural backwaters. Obsession with loss, fear of betrayal, and sudden violence plague Oates’ characters as she examines the lives of the working poor and follies of the irresponsible rich with searing clarity. George Guidall’s and Barbara Caruso’s masterful performances make this rich collection of stories a must-listen.

Nell Ryder is a sardonic and urbane school teacher transplanted to small-town Michigan in Joyce Carol Oates’ play. But when she gets into a dispute with an aggrieved parent, Nell finds herself accused of impropriety with one of her adolescent charges.

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 30 years, Margot herself becomes famous for her experiments with E. H. - and inadvertently falls in love with him.

Eight highly diverse works from one of America’s most prolific and versatile authors. This collection includes an exclusive dramatization of Oates’ best-selling novel American Appetites; two comedic plays, The Perfectionist and The Truth Teller; four short plays (Gulf War, Black, The Key, and Tone Clusters); as well as her libretto for Black Water: An American Opera, composed by John Duffy.

L.A. Theatre Works presents Five Short Stories by Women: A quintet of tales from some of America’s most distinguished female authors.

Mudgirl is a child abandoned by her mother in the silty flats of the Black Snake River. Cast aside, Mudgirl survives by an accident of fate - or destiny. After her rescue, the well-meaning couple who adopt Mudgirl quarantine her poisonous history behind the barrier of their middle-class values, seemingly sealing it off forever. But the bulwark of the present proves surprisingly vulnerable to the agents of the past.

Quentin P_ è un enigma per i suoi genitori, anche se non credono affatto all'accusa di molestie sessuali mossa da un minore nei suoi confronti. Quentin P_ è un enigma per il suo psichiatra, che comunque lo incoraggia, apprezzando le potenzialità positive dei suoi sogni, di cui parla tanto apertamente. Per sua nonna, Quentin P_ è solo un ragazzo dolcissimo, cui è impossibile dire di no. Ma Quentin P_ in verità è l'assassino psicopatico più terrificante del Michigan.

The latest Ecco reissue of Joyce Carol Oates’ early classics: a fiery gothic tale of doomed fates and demons of biblical proportions in rural New York state. Nathan Vickery came into the world amid unfortunate circumstances. His mother, Elsa Vickery, daughter of an agnostic small town doctor and his pious wife, was brutally assaulted at the age of 17. The son she gave birth to in the wake of this event is brought up by his grandmother as a devoted Christian. At the age of seven, Nathan begins to see visions of Christ and embarks on a path as a prodigy boy-preacher.

Written when Joyce Carol Oates was in her early 20s, and first published in 1964, With Shuddering Fall is her powerful debut novel. 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.

A gripping and moving new collection of stories that reimagines the meaning of loss - through often unexpected and violent means. Joyce Carol Oates is not only one of our most important novelists and literary critics, she is also an unparalleled master of the short story. Sourland - 16 previously uncollected stories that explore how the power of violence, loss, and grief shape both the psyche and the soul - shows us an author working at the height of her powers.

En 1936, los Schwart, una familia de inmigrantes desesperada por escapar de la Alemania nazi, se instala en una pequeña ciudad de Estados Unidos. El padre, un profesor de instituto, es rebajado al único trabajo al que tiene acceso: sepulturero y vigilante de cementerio.

Most kids write stories. Only a few of them grow up to be successful authors. But before there was Carrie, there was Jhonathan and the Witchs. And before there was Rabbit Angstrom, Toyota Dealer, there was Manuel Cirarro, famous detective. Could we have seen the seeds of success in Stephen King's and John Updike's juvenilia? A funny and surprisingly informative gathering of childhood creations by today's most celebrated writers.

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 37, Michaela faces the terrifying prospect of widowhood - and the loss of Gerard, whose identity has greatly shaped her own.

The Key and Tone Clusters are two one-act plays by 2009 Man Booker Nominee Joyce Carol Oates. The Key is a hilariously perverse encounter between a vacationing suburban housewife, recently separated from her husband, and a prosperous businessman. Tone Cluster is a chilling comedy that takes the form of an interview between a middle-aged, middle-class American couple and the media.

Sixteen year-old Katya Spivak is out for a walk on the gracious streets of Bayhead Harbor with her two summer babysitting charges when she's approached by silver-haired, elegant Marcus Kidder. At first, his interest in her seems harmless, even pleasant, like his name - a sort of gentle joke. His beautiful home, the children's books that he's written, his classical music, the marvelous art in his study, his lavish presents to her. But by degrees, almost imperceptibly, something changes.

In the title story, a white aspiring professor is convinced she is being followed. No need to panic - she has a handgun stowed away in her purse, just in case. But when she turns to confront her black male shadow, the situation isn't what she expects. In "The Rescuer" a promising graduate student detours to inner-city Trenton, New Jersey, to save her brother from a downward spiral. But she soon finds out there may be more to his world than to hers.

"Why do we write?" With this question Joyce Carol Oates, in this new collection of seminal essays and criticism, begins an imaginative exploration of the writing life and all its attendant anxieties, joys, and futilities. Leading her quest is a desire to understand the source of the writer's inspiration - do subjects haunt those who might bring them back to life until the writer submits? Or does something "happen" to us, a sudden ignition of a burning flame? Can the appearance of a muse-like Other bring about a writer's best work?

The need for love - obsessive, self-destructive, unpredictable - takes us to forbidden places, as in the chilling world of Give Me Your Heart, a new collection of stories by the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates. In ten razor-sharp stories, National Book Award winner Oates shows that the most deadly mysteries often begin at home.