The Doll-Master: And Other Tales of Terror

This Bram Stoker Award–winning collection is “certain to stick in your mind long after you’ve turned the last page” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch).  Includes “Big Momma,” a finalist for the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Short Story   Here are six of Joyce Carol Oates’s most “frightening—and deeply disturbing—short stories” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). In the titular story, a boy becomes obsessed with his cousin’s doll after her tragic death. As he grows older, he begins to collect “found dolls” from surrounding neighborhoods . . . each with its own sinister significance.   In “Gun Accident,” a teenage girl is delighted to house-sit for her favorite teacher, until an intruder forces his way inside—changing more than one life forever. The collection closes with the taut tale of a mystery bookstore owner whose designs on a rare bookshop in scenic New Hampshire devolve into a menacing game with real-life consequences. “At the heart of each story is a predator-prey relationship, and what makes them so terrifying is that most of us can easily picture ourselves as the prey, at least at some time during our lives” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).   “Everything she writes, in whatever genre, has an air of dread, because she deals in vulnerabilities and inevitabilities, in the desperate needs that drive people . . . to their fates. A sense of helplessness is the essence of horror, and Oates conveys that feeling as well as any writer around.” —Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times Book Review   “One of the stranger parts of the human condition may be our deep fascination, and at times troubling exploration, of the darker aspects of our nature . . . No other author explores the ugly, and at times, blazingly unapologetic underbelly of these impulses quite like Joyce Carol Oates in The Doll-Master.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette   “In her new collection . . . [Oates] relishes moments of gothic melodrama, while rooting them firmly in grindingly ordinary American lives.” —The Guardian   “Oates convincingly demonstrates her mastery of the macabre with this superlative story collection . . . This devil’s half-dozen of dread and suspense is a must read.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

From School Library Journal

The wonderfully old-fashioned subtitle of this collection brings to mind Edgar Allan Poe and other masters of supernatural horror, and indeed the title story was originally published in a collection by fantasy and horror editor Ellen Datlow. However, these six entries are terrifying in their utter mundanity. "The Doll-Master" contains a twist that this review won't reveal, while other pieces include a deep dive into the psychology of a George Zimmerma—like character (recalling the similarly timely themes of Oates's recent novel The Sacrifice); a gut-wrenching account by a young girl tasked to house-sit for her favorite teacher, only to be terrorized by her cousin; and a deadly accurate portrayal of a very lonely girl who simply befriends the wrong family. The terrors all end in death, nearly all of which take place just after the end of the story, allowing Oates to focus on the psychology of killers, victims, and bystanders in the moments when a different outcome is still possible, if not probable. Few readers will find these offerings scary in the traditional sense, but they invoke a kind of primal dread that can be even more terrifying. VERDICT Another fantastic anthology from Oates—terrifying and realistic at the same time and featuring some of her most teen-centric characters in years. Those who need encouragement to read this collection can be directed to the three selections with youthful protagonists, but all six should grip the imagination of any fan of crime and murder.—Mark Flowers, Rio Vista Library, CA

Minneapolis Star-Tribune “Oates convincingly demonstrates her mastery of the macabre with this superlative story collection . . . This devil’s half-dozen of dread and suspense is a must read.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Praise for The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror: “Oates’s brand of horror has never required the invocation of other worlds: This world is terrible enough for her. Everything she writes, in whatever genre, has an air of dread, because she deals in vulnerabilities and inevitabilities, in the desperate needs that drive people . . . to their fates. A sense of helplessness is the essence of horror, and Oates conveys that feeling as well as any writer around.”—Terrence Rafferty, New York Times Book Review “Does any writer around do literary creepy like Joyce Carol Oates? . . . The terrifying tales in The Doll-Master . . . are certain to stick in your mind long after you’ve turned the last page . . . The stories always have an undercurrent of menace poised to break through at any moment.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch “One of the stranger parts of the human condition may be our deep fascination, and at times troubling exploration, of the darker aspects of our nature . . . No other author explores the ugly, and at times, blazingly unapologetic underbelly of these impulses quite like Joyce Carol Oates in The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror. This is a collection of six frightening—and deeply disturbing—short stories . . . Stories that . . . stay with the reader long after they’ve turned the final twisted page.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “Throughout her extraordinarily prolific career, Joyce Carol Oates’s work has always embraced aspects of the macabre. In her new collection, The Doll-Master, she relishes moments of gothic melodrama, while rooting them firmly in grindingly ordinary American lives . . . It’s a collection that displays Oates’s ability to inhabit distinctive voices to chilling effect.”—Guardian (UK) “Bone-chilling . . . At the heart of each story is a predator-prey relationship, and what makes them so terrifying is that most of us can easily picture ourselves as the prey, at least at some time during our lives.”

About the Author

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of such national bestsellers as The Falls, Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys. Her other titles for the Mysterious Press include Jack of Spades, High Crime Area, and The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares, which won the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Short Horror Fiction. She is the recipient of the National Book Award for them and the 2010 President’s Medal for the Humanities.

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