Audiobooks by Joyce Carol Oates

"'Chilling' FINANCIAL TIMES ‘Impressive and unsettling' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 'Eerie, shocking, provoking' GILLIAN FLYNN 'Rich in suspense, diabolical secrets and psychological insight’ ECONOMIST 'Engrossing even as it horrifies' BIG ISSUE A spellbinding novel of literary and psychological suspense about the dark secrets that surface after the shocking disappearance of a charismatic, mercurial teacher at an elite boarding school. Who is Francis Fox? A charming English teacher new to the idyllic Langhorne Academy, Fox beguiles many of his students, their parents, and his colleagues at the elite boarding school, while leaving others wondering where he came from and why his biography is so enigmatic. When two brothers discover Fox’s car half-submerged in a pond in a local nature preserve and parts of an unidentified body strewn about the nearby woods, the entire community, including Detective Horace Zwender and his deputy, begins to ask disturbing questions about Francis Fox and who he might really be. A hypnotic, galloping tale of crime and complicity, revenge and restitution, victim vs. predator, Joyce Carol Oates’s Fox illuminates the darkest corners of the human psyche while asking profound moral questions about justice and the response evil demands. A character as magnetically diabolical as Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley and Vladimir Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, Francis Fox enchants and manipulates nearly everyone around him, until at last he meets someone he can’t outfox. Written in Oates’s trademark intimate, sweeping style, and interweaving multiple points of view, Fox is a triumph of craftsmanship and artistry, a novel as profound as it is propulsive, as moving as it is full of mystery. 'Hauntingly explores the way that beguiling figures can inspire, create and shape art’ LOS ANGELES TIMES 'Mesmerizing' MICHAEL CONNELLY 'Oates is a genius' REBECCA MAKKAI 'Oates views the US through a gothic prism, forming images as striking as they are disturbing' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Absolutely chilling … this is Oates at her most disturbing and masterful’ SEATTLE TIMES 'Inescapably abhorrent yet enthralling … Oates understands, as always, how to keep us on the hook’ LOS ANGELES TIMES 'Engrossing even as it horrifies and reminds us that we cannot nor should not look away’ BIG ISSUE ‘A tautly wound procedural, elegantly written … Oates once again masterfully limns the worse angels of our nature’ KIRKUS REVIEWS ‘Menacing, mesmerizing, and thoroughly provocative’ BOOKLIST"

Joyce Carol Oates (Author), Chris Andrew Ciulla, Eunice Wong, Fred Berman, Gail Shalan, Ina Barron, Kirsten Potter, Matt Godfrey, Max Meyers, Rachel L. Jacobs, Rebecca Lowman (Narrator)

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Joyce Carol Oates: Letters to a Biographer

"This rich compilation of Joyce Carol Oates’s letters across four decades displays her warmth and generosity, her droll and sometimes wicked sense of humor, her phenomenal energy, and most of all, her mastery of the lost art of letter writing. In this generous selection of Joyce Carol Oates’s letters to her biographer and friend Greg Johnson, readers will discover a never-before-seen dimension of her phenomenal talent. In 1975, when Johnson was a graduate student, he first wrote to Oates, already a world-famous author, and drew an appreciative, empathetic response. Soon the two began a fairly intense, largely epistolary friendship that would last until the present day. As time passed, letters became faxes, and faxes became emails, but the energy and vividness of Oates’s writing never abated. Her letters were often sprinkled with the names of well-known public figures, from John Updike and Toni Morrison to Steve Martin and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. There are also descriptions of far-flung travels she undertook with her first husband, the scholar and editor Raymond Smith, and with her second, the distinguished Princeton neuroscientist Charlie Gross. But much of Oates’s prose centered on the pleasures of her home life, including her pet cats and the wildlife outside her study window. Whereas her academic essays and book reviews are eloquent in a formal manner, in these letters she is wholly relaxed, even when she is serious in her concerns. Like Johnson, she was always engaged in work, whether a long novel or a brief essay, and the letters give a fascinating glimpse into Oates’s writing practice."

Joyce Carol Oates (Author), Caroline Slaughter (Narrator)

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Broke Heart Blues: A Novel

"The much-anticipated reissue of a novel that is one of Joyce Carol Oates's personal favorites among her oeuvre; featuring a new afterword by Oates IN THE HEART OF A LANGUID JULY, ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD JOHN REDDY HEART drives a traffic-stopping, salmon-colored Cadillac into the quiet upstate town of Willowsville, New York. His mother, Dahlia Heart, a blackjack dealer, has brought her family east from Las Vegas to claim the rambling mansion left to her by a wealthy suitor. But it is John Reddy-already growing into a heartbreaking hybrid of James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Elvis Presley-who will claim the town itself. It is John Reddy who will arouse the desire of Willowsville's teenage girls and the worship of its boys, the fear and envy of its men, and the yearning of its women. And it is John Reddy who will capture the town's soul forever on the night a prominent citizen is shot dead in Dahlia Heart's bedroom-and a statewide manhunt sweeps Willowsville's rebel outlaw into the realm of living myth. Over the course of thirty years, Broke Heart Blues charts the rise and fall-and the ultimate call to reckoning- of John Reddy Heart, through the myriad voices of those who find him their whipping boy, savior, dream lover, and confessor. At once a scathing indictment of the cultlike nature of fame and celebrity in America and a deeply moving mediation on human need and longing, the novel explores loneliness, and the profound price we pay for our desires and dreams."

Joyce Carol Oates (Author), Barton Caplan, Brittany Pressley, Cassandra Campbell, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Finlay Stevenson, Fred Berman, Joyce Carol Oates, Linda Jones, Vas Eli (Narrator)

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Butcher

"‘Simply the most consistently inventive, brilliant, curious and creative writer going’ GILLIAN FLYNN 'Gripping … Bravura storytelling' VOGUE 'A blood-soaked, gothic nightmare' FINANCIAL TIMES From one of our most accomplished storytellers, an extraordinary and arresting novel about a nineteenth-century women's asylum, and a terrifying doctor who wants to change the world. Humiliated by a procedure gone terribly wrong, Dr Silas Weir is forced to take a position at the New Jersey Asylum for Female Lunatics. There, his work focuses on women who have been neglected by the state – women he subjects to grotesque modes of experimentation. Based on authentic historical documents, Butcher is a nightmare voyage through the darkest regions of the American psyche. 'A ghastly and harrowing page-turner' STEPHEN KING, via X 'A triumph of style and brio’ FINANCIAL TIMES 'Terrifying' FLAUNT 'Vividly and compellingly-drawn' iNEWS"

Joyce Carol Oates (Author), Amy Shiels, Cassandra Campbell, Danny Campbell, Edoardo Ballerini, Jeremy Carlisle Parker, Max Meyers, Robert Fass, Tavia Gilbert (Narrator)

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A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers

"Joyce Carol Oates assembles an outstanding cast of authors—including Margaret Atwood, Tananarive Due, and Megan Abbott—to explore, subvert, and reinvent one of the most vital subgenres of horror. Featuring brand-new stories by: Margaret Atwood, Tananarive Due, Joyce Carol Oates, Megan Abbott, Aimee Bender, Cassandra Khaw, Lisa Lim, Elizabeth Hand, Valerie Martin, Raven Leilani, Sheila Kohler, Joanna Margaret, Lisa Tuttle, Aimee LaBrie, and Yumi Dineen Shiroma. While the common belief is that “body horror” as a subgenre of horror fiction dates back to the 1970s, Joyce Carol Oates suggests that Medusa, the snakehaired gorgon in Greek mythology, is the “quintessential emblem of female body horror.” In A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers, Oates has assembled a spectacular cast to explore this subgenre focusing on distortions to the human body in the most fascinating of ways."

Joyce Carol Oates (Author), Bianca Amato, Eva Kaminsky, Lynnette R. Freeman, Nancy Wu (Narrator)

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Zero-Sum

"‘Oates’s imagination is as unique, dystopian and vivid as Lewis Carroll’s’ ROSE TREMAIN 'A master storyteller' THE TIMES 'Electric' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Zero-sum games are played for lethal stakes in these arresting stories by one of America’s most acclaimed writers. A brilliant young philosophy student bent on seducing her famous philosopher-mentor finds herself outmaneuvered; diabolically clever high school girls wreak a particularly apt sort of vengeance on sexual predators in their community; a woman stalked by a would-be killer may be confiding in the wrong former lover; a young woman is morbidly obsessed by her unfamiliar new role as “mother.” In the collection’s longest story, a much-praised cutting-edge writer cruelly experiments with “drafts” of his own suicide. In these powerfully wrought stories that hold a mirror up to our time, Joyce Carol Oates has created a world of erotic obsession, thwarted idealism, and ever-shifting identities. Provocative and stunning, Zero-Sum reinforces Oates’s standing as a literary treasure and an artist of the mysterious interior life. ‘Alluringly dark and spiky’ NEW STATESMAN ‘Zero-Sum is brilliant – bloodied, breathless, weird’ A. K. BLAKEMORE ‘Dark, unsettling stories … There’s a disquieting violence simmering … a shrill alarm of disquiet’ DAILY MAIL ‘Oates is an inspired writer, and a formidable psychologist’ INDEPENDENT"

Joyce Carol Oates (Author), Amy Jensen, Cassandra Campbell, Karissa Vacker, Linda Jones, Max Meyers, Olivia Rose Baressi, Robert Fass (Narrator)

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48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister

"From the towering imagination of Joyce Carol Oates, literary icon and author of BLONDE, now a major motion picture. When a beautiful woman mysteriously vanishes, her sister must tally up the clues to discover her fate. Marguerite has disappeared from her small town in Upstate New York. But was foul play involved? Did she merely get away for fun? Or did she finally make the decision to leave behind her claustrophobic life of limited opportunities? Her younger sister Gigi wonders if the flimsy silk Dior dress, so casually abandoned on the floor, is a clue to Marguerite's having seemingly vanished. The police examine the footprints made by her Ferragamo boots leaving the house, ending abruptly, and puzzle over how that can help lead to her. Gigi, not so pretty as her sister, slowly reveals her hatred for the perfect, much-loved, Marguerite. Bit by bit, like ripping the petals off a flower blossom, revelations about both women are uncovered. Subtly, but with the unbearable suspense at which Joyce Carol Oates excels, the fate of the missing beauty slowly comes to light In this suspenseful story about the complex relationship between two sisters. 'An exquisite novel of suspense... This elegant, captivating tale is un-put-downable.' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY"

Joyce Carol Oates (Author), Sarah Welborn (Narrator)

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[Spanish] - Blonde

"LA VIDA DE MARILYN MONROE CONTADA POR JOYCE CAROL OATES El libro en el que se basa Blonde, la película de Netflix protagonizada por Ana de Armas y uno de los 40 libros imprescindibles escritos por mujeres según Elena Ferrante «Una de nuestras autoras favoritas, [...] indestructible, [...] Tiene una mirada super lúcida y tremenda; también me gusta mucho el mito de Marilyn, del éxito destructivo. [...] El libro es fantástico, como todo lo que hace ella.» Carlos Zanón, Babelia, El País «Socorro, siento que la Vida se acerca.» Marilyn Monroe era puro fuego, sexualidad a flor de piel, romances turbulentos, pero también era una mujer frágil, asustada y repleta de inseguridades que buscaba en otros -en el Ex Deportista, en el Dramaturgo o en el Presidente- ese amor que ella misma se negaba. Una artista superdotada cargada de conflictos, temores y pasiones desatadas; una niña que no dejó de huir hacia delante y que llegó a burlar a la propia muerte para convertirse en leyenda. Tras una exhaustiva documentación, Joyce Carol Oates redibuja la vida interior de Norma Jeane Baker -la pequeña sin padre, la mujer dependiente de tranquilizantes y estimulantes, la actriz y amante malograda- y a su «Amiga Mágica del Espejo», la rubia idolatrada a la que el mundo llegó a conocer como Marilyn Monroe. La crítica ha dicho... «¿Puede ser la seducción innata ante una cámara la fuente del nacimiento de un doble? O incluso, ¿puede la imagen capturada por la cámara/espejo tomar cuerpo en la realidad, ante la mirada de deseo de los otros? Blonde de Joyce Carol Oates ahonda indirectamente en estas cuestiones a través de uno de los grandes iconos de la cultura popular del siglo XX.» Alan Salvadó, Diari de Tarragona «Nadie ha plasmado en palabras a Marilyn de una manera más brillante que Oates.» Sunday Times «Oates nos hace vivir la vida de Marilyn Monroe. Y es un verdadero infierno. Y es brillante. Porque nos querremos arrancar los ojos para dejar de mirar, y es imposible.» Ann Patchett, The Times «Novelistas como John Updike, Philip Roth, Tom Wolfe y Normal Mailer han luchado a brazo partido por el título de Gran Novelista Americano. Pero quizás se equivoca. Puede que ese título pertenezca a una mujer.» The Herald «Blonde es lo que todas las biografías de Monroe deberían ser pero no son: una reinvención fabulosa de la vida de una reinvención fabulosa, un espejo para nuestras vanidades colectivas y un libro que se devora.» Evening Standard «Oates no ha tenido ningún miedo a la hora de abordar un asunto que atraviesa casi cualquier aspecto de la historia de mediados del siglo XX [...]. Un libro potente e hipnótico.» Literary Review «Un logro épico, una obra maestra y una obra de arte concebida de un modo tan emocionante que a veces pareciera que es algo más que meramente un libro.» Independent on Sunday «Dramática, provocativa e inquietantemente sugerente, Blonde es tan explosiva como su protagonista, la legendaria Marilyn Monroe. En una prosa impresionista de elevada potencia, Oates crea un retrato sorprendente y conmovedor de la estrella mítica y de la sociedad que la creó y le falló.» Publishers Weekly «Una magnífica obra, escrita con parte de esa frenética inspiración con la que Marilyn Monroe vivió su vida. Si no ha leído aún a Joyce Carol Oates, no lo deje por más tiempo. Empiece aquí y ahora.» Susan Jeffreys, The Independent"

Joyce Carol Oates (Author), Karin Zavala (Narrator)

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Extenuating Circumstances

"Two hitmen in a depressed rust belt town struggle with a job gone wrong. A girl witnesses a horrifying accident and carries it with her for the rest of her life. Medical students bring a severed foot to a college party. Five-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Joyce Carol Oates has made a career of exploring the forbidden corners of human experience, and the stories collected here, spanning her first three decades as a writer, are among her most unsettling and unforgettable works to date. Originally published in long out-of-print volumes, these tales have not appeared in any form this century – until now. Formally fresh and endlessly experimental, they show a writer boldly engaging with disturbing truths and terrifying possibilities, and deconstructing the tropes and expectations of traditional prose writing as she does so. But beyond their stylistic ingenuity, these are creepy, suspenseful stories that cut straight to the bone. “A collection of twenty-two disturbing tales of crime and suspense from literary icon Joyce Carol Oates, 'America's preeminent fiction writer” NEW YORKER"

Joyce Carol Oates (Author), Hillary Huber (Narrator)

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Babysitter

"‘A page-turner … nothing less than magical’ Observer ‘An extraordinary slice of suburban noir’ Daily Mail From one of America’s most renowned storytellers comes a novel about love and deceit, and lust and redemption, against a background of child abductions in the affluent suburbs of Detroit. In the waning days of the turbulent 1970s, in the wake of unsolved killings that have shocked Detroit, the lives of several residents are drawn together, with tragic consequences. There is Hannah, wife of a prominent local businessman, who has begun an affair with a darkly charismatic stranger whose identity remains elusive; Mikey, a canny street hustler who finds himself on an unexpected mission to rectify injustice; and the serial killer known as Babysitter, an enigmatic and terrifying figure at the periphery of elite Detroit. As Babysitter continues his rampage of killings, these individuals intersect with one another in startling and unexpected ways. Suspenseful, brilliantly orchestrated and engrossing, Babysitter is a starkly narrated exploration of the riskiness of pursuing alternate lives, calling into question how far we are willing to go to protect those whom we cherish most. In its scathing indictment of corrupt politics, unexamined racism, and the enabling of sexual predation in America, Babysitter is a thrilling work of contemporary fiction. ‘Simply the most consistently inventive, brilliant, curious and creative writer going, as far as I’m concerned’ Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl ‘Joyce Carol Oates is a writer who always takes your breath away' Mail on Sunday 'A writer of extraordinary strengths' Guardian"

Joyce Carol Oates, Max Meyers (Author), Cassandra Campbell, Kirby Heybourne (Narrator)

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When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson

"A chilling anthology collecting stories from today’s best horror writers, inspired by and in tribute to the genius of Shirley Jackson Shirley Jackson is a seminal writer of horror and mystery fiction, whose legacy resonates globally today. Chilling, human, poignant, and strange, her stories have inspired a generation of writers and readers. This anthology, edited by legendary horror editor Ellen Datlow, brings together today’s leading horror writers to offer their own personal tribute to the work of Shirley Jackson. Featuring Joyce Carol Oates, Josh Malerman, Carmen Maria Machado, Paul Tremblay, Richard Kadrey, Stephen Graham Jones, Elizabeth Hand, Kelly Link, Cassandra Khaw, Karen Heuler, Benjamin Percy, John Langan, Laird Barron, Jeffrey Ford, M. Rickert, Seanan McGuire, Gemma Files, and Genevieve Valentine."

Benjamin Percy, Elizabeth Hand, Ellen Datlow, Josh Malerman, Joyce Carol Oates, Seanan McGuire (Author), Bernadette Dunne, Cassandra Campbell, Erin Moon, Feodor Chin, John Lescault, Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Kate Mulligan, Nicol Zanzarella (Narrator)

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Breathe

"‘America’s preeminent fiction writer’ New Yorker ‘A raw, propulsive tale of love and grief’ Mail on Sunday A novel of love and loss from the bestselling and prizewinning author of Blonde. Michaela and her husband have moved to the starkly beautiful but uncanny landscape of New Mexico, to take up an academic residency. But when Gerard is struck by a fatal illness, their life begins to resemble a nightmare. At thirty-seven, Michaela must first face the terrifying prospect of widowhood, then the chaos of the days when Gerard is gone. Haunting and utterly heart-wrenching, Breathe explores the intense madness of grief and what happens when a love cannot be surrendered. ‘A fever dream of a novel’ New York Times ‘Simply the most consistently inventive, brilliant, curious and creative writer going, as far as I’m concerned’ Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl"

Joyce Carol Oates (Author), Cassandra Campbell (Narrator)

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Audiobooks by Joyce Carol Oates

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