DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense - Softcover

Oates, Joyce Carol

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802128114 ISBN 13: 9780802128119

Publisher: Mysterious Press, 2018

Synopsis

In the seven feverishly unsettling works that compose DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense, Joyce Carol Oates focuses on the inner lives of vulnerable girls and women, some victimized, others provoked―by deep emo-tional unrest―to commit violence against others.

In the title story, a precocious eleven-year-old is in thrall to an older male relative―the mysterious, attractive black sheep of the family―and climbs into his sky-blue Chevy to be driven to an uncertain, and unforgettable, fate. In the Bram Stoker Award-winning short story, “The Crawl Space,” a widow obsessively re-turns to the house she once shared with her husband, until an invitation from the new owners to come inside takes a turn for the menacing. In “The Drowned Girl,” a university transfer student becomes increasingly obsessed with the drowning/murder of another female student as her own sense of self begins to deteriorate. And in the final story, “Welcome to Friendly Skies,” a trusting group of bird-watchers is borne to a remote part of the globe―and to a harrowing fate. This is an arresting fiction collection from “one of the great writers of our time” (John Gardner).

About this title

About the Author

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of such national bestsellers as The Falls, Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys. Her other titles for the Mysterious Press include The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror, Jack of Spades, and The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares, which won the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Short Horror Fiction. She is the recipient of the National Book Award for them and the 2010 President’s Medal for the Humanities.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From “Dis mem ber”

At the bridge Rowan Billiet takes hold of my wrist to lead me down the steep path to the creek. His forefinger and thumb gripping my wrist hard enough to leave a red mark.

It is just a playful gesture, I am thinking. The way my grandfather runs his callused fingers through my hair and I am not supposed to flinch or whimper or cry for that will hurt Grandpa’s feelings.

Beneath the bridge there is a large dark rectangular shadow in the water that is the shadow of the bridge rippling like something alive and breathing. The shallow water near shore is heaped with rocks but also concrete rubble and rusted iron rods and it is here that Rowan pulls me toward to see something that looks at first like slow-bobbing clothes or rags or something woolly. Unless I shut my eyes (as Rowan would not allow me to do) there is nowhere else to look.

See? That’s something ain’t it, lookit the size of that.

Rowan makes a thin whistling sound. I don’t understand what I am seeing. My eyes blink and swell with moisture. And the strong smell of it, that comes up in hot wafts like heat from a vent in the floor, that makes me feel faint.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mysterious Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0802128114
• ISBN 13: 9780802128119
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256