High Crime Area: Tales of Darkness and Dread

Eight stories from the author of A Book of American Martyrs that display her “mastery of imagery and stream of consciousness” (Kirkus Reviews).   Joyce Carol Oates is an unparalleled investigator of human personality. In these eight stories, she deftly tests the bonds between damaged individuals—brother and sister. teacher and student, two lonesome strangers on a subway—in the beautiful, bracing prose that has become her signature.   In the title story, a white, aspiring professor in Detroit tries to shake a black, male shadow during the summer of the city’s 1967 race riots. In “The Rescuer,” a promising graduate student detours to inner-city Trenton, New Jersey, to save her brother from a downward spiral, only to find herself entranced by his dangerous new world. Meanwhile, a young woman prowls the New York City subways in search of her perfect man in “Lorelei.” In each of these short stories, Oates portrays a desperate confrontation with the demons inside us. Sometimes it’s the human who wins, and sometimes it’s the demon.   “Oates offers unexpected glimmers of redemption amid the grotesquerie, degradation, and exploitation that fill this collection’s eight tales.” —Publishers Weekly

From Booklist

Oates (Evil Eye, 2013) carries forward the great American dark-tales tradition with spellbinding craft, a cutting female eye, and a keen sense of how the diabolical infiltrates everyday existence, masterfully conjuring realms grotesque, erotic, and ironic. She begins with a neatly feinting revenge story about a “conscientious orderly” and a nun who once ran a notorious orphanage. We meet an ethereal, wealthy widow who naively decides that marijuana will ease her pain, a prescription for mayhem. Oates portrays with forensic exactitude misshapen and abused children and a sexist celebrity writer who gets his comeuppance. “The Rescuer” is a complex and haunting tale about family and race centered on a dutiful young woman trying to help her brother in the drug-poisoned heart of Trenton, New Jersey. Oates extends her inquiry into the racial divide and returns to another of her signature settings, Detroit circa 1967, in the exquisitely frank and distressing title story about the fears of a young, white English teacher. Powerhouse Oates brings both exterior and interior worlds into excruciatingly sharp focus, evoking dread, grim exaltation, and the paralysis of prey. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Oates’ potent dark tales are addictive, and her readers’ habit must be fed. --Donna Seaman

About the Author

Joyce Carol Oates is the award-winning author of such national bestsellers as The Falls, Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys. Her other titles include Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense, The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror, and Jack of Spades.Donna Postel is fascinated by all kinds of stories and loves telling them. From memoir and biography to literary fiction, romance, mystery, and suspense, Donna uses her innate curiosity, talent, and decades of experience on stage and in the recording studio to bring books to life.

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