DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

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).