Oates, Joyce Carol

A chronicle of the author's hardscrabble childhood in rural western New York State describes the family members, first friendships, and early experiences with death that shaped her literary career.

"From literary icon Joyce Carol Oates comes a brand new collection of haunting and, at times, darkly humorous mystery & suspense stories. These are tales of psyches pushed to their limits by the expectations of everyday life--from a woman who gets lost on her drive home to her plush suburban home and ends up breaking into a stranger's house, to a first-person account of a cloned 1940s magazine pinup girl being sold at auction and embodying America's ideals of beauty and womanhood. Taken as a whole, the collection forms a poignant tapestry of regular people searching for their place in a social hierarchy, often with devastating and disastrous results. Rendered with stylish, fresh writing from an author who continues to push the envelope, the stories deftly weave in and out of a stream-of-consciousness to reflect the ways we process traumatic experiences and impart that uncertainty and uneasiness to the reader. Originally appearing in publications as disparate as Harper's Vice, and Conjunctions, the stories comprising Night, Neon showcase Oates' mastery of the suspense story--and her relentless use of the form to conduct unapologetically honest explorations of American identity"--From the publisher's web site.

Examines boxing in various aspects: boxing as metaphor, spectacle, dance, history, lore, women and boxing, etc.

Collection of political, spiritual, and personal interpretations by American authors, critics, commentators, activists and artists.

A Fourth of July party ends in tragedy when twenty-six-year-old Kelly Kelleher leaves the party with a powerful, intoxicated senator.

"A William Abrahams book." Contents: Loves of the parrots--Your blood in a little puddle, on the ground --Self-portrait as a still life--I saw a woman walking into a plate glass window --etc.