Oates, Joyce Carol

"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.

Tells of a seemingly ordinary, successful family who is nearly torn apart when tragedy strikes but finds a way to remain happy and loyal despite rumors, secrets, and strife.

Presents a collection of essays originally published in various periodicals throughout the twentieth century, written by a number of noted writers including Mark Twain, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Katherine Anne Porter, John Updike, and many others.

An author famous for a novel about his Jewish grandparents' lives during the Holocaust is diagnosed with a debilitating nerve disease and hires a troubled, abused young woman as his assistant, unaware that she and her boyfriend are anti-Semitic.

Feature writer Nikki Eaton, contemptuous of her widowed mother's domestic, middle-class lifestyle, embarks on a year of grief and transformation when her mom is murdered shortly after a Mother's Day party during which Nikki went out of her way to be offensive.

A fictional memoir in which Richard Everett describes his experiences as an eleven-year-old murderer.

A collection of short works includes "So Help Me God," in which a young wife wonders about the identity of a flirtatious caller, and "Madison at Guignol," in which an unhappy fashionista discovers a horrendous secret at a clothing store.

Kathleen, a nurse's aide, falls in love with a doctor who exploits her and sets the path of the remainder of her life.