The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares by Joyce Carol Oates

These are ordinary people, not psychopaths or ninjas or geniuses or heroes, just schoolteachers, single mothers, doctors, widows, publishers, all living ordinary lives until something dark casts its shadow over them. She really excels in spinning out a story with characters who show their scars, and all the more ghastly wounds squirming under their skins. Joyce Carol Oates has written novels, but I understand she's more widely regarded for her short-form fiction, and after reading this volume, I can see why. But there is so much short fiction out there of excellent quality, even if the market for it (particularly in my favorite genres of SF&F) has largely dried up as far as being something that serious pro authors can support themselves on. Well, also because I guess I just generally prefer novels over short stories. And somehow, this has trended me away from reading short stories, since it's harder to review a collection of short stories than a novel. I have noticed lately that reading and reviewing has become a 'hobby' in itself, and I often am already thinking about what I'm going to say about a book even before I finish it. The powerful stories in this extraordinary collection further enhance Joyce Carol Oates’s standing as one of the world’s greatest writers of suspense. She has no idea what kinds of doors she may be opening. In “Helping Hands,” published here for the first time, a lonely woman meets a man in the unlikely clutter of a dingy charity shop and extends friendship.

Marissa’s seemingly inevitable fate becomes ever more terrifying as the older girl relishes her power, giving the tale unbearable tension with a shocking conclusion. Taken by an older girl from her school who has told two friends in her thrall of the Indian legend of the Corn Maiden, in which a girl is sacrificed to ensure a good crop, Marissa is kept in a secluded basement and convinced that the world has ended. “The Corn Maiden” is the gut-wrenching story of Marissa, a beautiful and sweet eleven-year-old girl with hair the color of corn silk.

An incomparable master storyteller in all forms, in The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares Joyce Carol Oates spins six imaginative tales of suspense.

The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares by Joyce Carol Oates