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Published May 2016
304 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
From one of our most important contemporary writers, The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror is a bold, haunting collection of six stories.
In the title story, a young boy becomes obsessed with his cousin's doll after she tragically passes away from leukemia. As he grows older, he begins to collect "found dolls" from the surrounding neighborhoods and stores his treasures in the abandoned carriage house on his family's estate. But just what kind of dolls are they? In "Gun Accident," a teenage girl is thrilled when her favorite teacher asks her to house-sit, even on short notice. But when an intruder forces his way into the house while the girl is there, the fate of more than one life is changed forever. In "Equatorial," set in the exotic Galapagos, an affluent American wife experiences disorienting assaults upon her sense of who her charismatic husband really is, and what his plans may be for her.
In The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror, Joyce Carol Oates evokes the "fascination of the abomination" that is at the core of the most profound, the most unsettling, and the most memorable of dark mystery fiction.
"Starred Review. 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
"What it lacks: deep, well-plumbed explorations of truly troubled and disturbing psyches. For readers who like the frisson of psychological horror without too much commitment." - Kirkus
This information about The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo by Dustin Cohen
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and has been nominated several times for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. In 2020 she was awarded the Cino Del Duca World Prize for Literature. She is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Distinguished Professor of the Humanities emerita at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
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