Give Me Your Heart - by Joyce Carol Oates (Paperback)

About the Book

A new collection of mesmerizing, macabre tales from one of the most important living American writers (Peter Straub, The New Statesman).

Book Synopsis

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 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.

From the Back Cover

Haunting . . . Written in the author s classic, clear style, these narratives enchant. Boston Globe
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, 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.
Dread, in fiction, can be a magnificent thing . . . Oates isn t writing horror fiction, but she might as well be. Her stories pack the same kind of visceral wallop. Los Angeles Times
JOYCE CAROL OATES is the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the winner of the National Book Award. Among her major works are We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, The Falls, and, under the imprint of Otto Penzler, Rape: A Love Story, Beasts, The Female of the Species, and The Museum of Dr. Moses.
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Review Quotes

"Haunting . . . Written in the author's classic, clear style, these narratives enchant." -- Boston Globe

"Dread, in fiction, can be a magnificent thing . . . Oates isn't writing horror fiction, but she might as well be. Her stories pack the same kind of visceral wallop." -- Los Angeles Times