The Corn Maiden: And Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

(Paperback)

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Description

From the towering imagination of Joyce Carol Oates, literary icon and author of BLONDE, now a major motion picture, seven nightmarish and unbearably taut tales. Marissa is an innocent girl, with hair the colour of corn-silk. She does not hold others in strange thrall, as some young women do, she obeys her parents, she does not stay late after school, lingering on her walk through the swaying heads of maize. She is the perfect sacrifice. Twice nominated for the Nobel Prize, Oates presents an unbearably taut and terrifying tale combining the fury of folklore and blood sacrfice with the depths of adolescent insecurity in The Corn Maiden, a novella, followed by six other nightmares. Reviews for Joyce Carol Oates: 'A writer of extraordinary strengths.' Guardian 'Oates chillingly depicts the darkness lurking within the everyday.' Sunday Express 'Both haunting and sublime.' Literary Review 'Splendidly chilling.' Financial Times 'Visceral, psychologically involving, and socially astute.' Booklist

Reviews

Harrowing stuff: slabs of psychological terror that explore various deviant behaviour, unhealthy obsession and downright horror * Independent *
A riveting story, affecting as well as suspenseful. Oates doesn't flinch from grisly outcomes * Irish Times *
As usual with Oates, it is horribly readable, but driven by something disturbingly like genuine misanthropy * Sunday Times *
The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares provides further confirmation of a unique writer's restless, preternatural brilliance * Guardian *
A sense of helplessness is the essence of horror, and Oates conveys that feeling as well as any writer around * New York Times Book Review *

Author Bio

Joyce Carol Oates, literary icon, is the author of more than 70 books, including the bestselling novels We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. Among her many honours are the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the National Book Award. Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. Follow Joyce on @JoyceCarolOates