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In the title story of her taut new fiction collection, Joyce Carol Oates writes: Life was not of the surface like the glossy skin of an apple, but deep inside the fruit where seeds are harbored. There is no writer more capable of picking out those seeds and exposing all their secret tastes and poisons than Oates herselfâas demonstrated in these six stories.
One tale 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 Hopperâs 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 âThe Long-Legged Girl,â an aging, jealous wife crafts an unusual game of Russian roulette involving a pair of Wedgwood teacups, a strong Bengal brew, and a lethal concoction of medicine. Who will drink from the wrong cup, the wife or the dance student she believes to be her husbandâs latest conquest?
In âThe Sign of the Beast,â when a former Sunday school teacherâs corpse turns up, the blighted adolescent she had by turns petted and ridiculed confesses to her murderâbut is he really responsible? And another young outsider, Horace Phineas Love, Jr., is haunted by apparitions at the very edge of the spectrum of visibility after the death of his tortured father in âNight-Gaunts,â a fantastic ode to H.P. Lovecraft.
âConsummately well-written, stylistically dashing...forthrightly nightmarish.ââKirkus Reviews
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 14, 2020 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780802146281
- File size: 2738 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780802146281
- File size: 7387 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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