Give Me Your Heart

In the chilling world of Give Me Your Heart, the need for love is obsessive, self-destructive and unpredictable. It takes us to forbidden places, confronts us with gruesome truths, and leads us beyond our control.

In the unsettling 'Strip Poker,' a reckless teenage girl must turn the tables on a group of threatening young men. Can she outplay them? In the award-winning 'Smother!' a daughter's nightmarish childhood memory brings trouble to the door of her bourgeois mother. Which of them will win? In 'The First Husband,' a jealous man discovers his wife lied about her first marriage, and plans a cruel revenge. Will he go through with it?

In these and other powerful tales, children move beyond their parents' reach, wives and husbands wake up as strangers, haunted pasts intrude upon uncertain futures, and lives hang in the balance. In ten razor-sharp stories, National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates shows that the most deadly mysteries often begin at home.

Review: Oates can tell a story in one liquid throw, like a cowgirl uncoiling a rope... A born writer, silky fluent and intimate * Sunday Times *

Suspense fiction is like a powerful drug: one page, one taste, can induce such a tingly, speedy feeling that it takes an almost superhuman effort not to finish everything off in just one sitting. At least that is how it is with Joyce Carol Oates... you cannot put [her] book down. * New York Times Book Review *

Joyce Carol Oates is a genius * Guardian *

Violence forever simmers beneath the surface of [Oates's] fiction... few American writers can match her for unsettling intensity and insight. * Sunday Times *

As ever, Oates shows a perfect ear for everyday speech and the longings of people who might never have a chance.' * Scotsman *

Her prose is peerless.. few writers move so effortlessly from the Gothic tale to the psychological thriller to the epic family saga to the lyrical novella. Even fewer authors can so compellingly and entertainingly tell a story * Scotland on Sunday *

This latest collection of stories leads us deeper into the chambers of Oates's sinister mind... Give Me Your Heart is electrifying in its range and its sizzling nastiness. * Scottish Sunday Herald *

Unsettling? Yes. Brilliant? Undeniably. * DIVA *

Powerful narratives... further evidence, as if it were needed, of the tremendous versatility of this author. * Daily Mail *

For a writer as formidably prolific as she is, it is remarkable that the stories here have a freshness and versatility that leave the reader wanting more. * Times Literary Supplement *

Joyce Carol Oates at 72 remains one of America's most prolific writers, churning out fluent prose and poetry with enviable regularity. There's a lot of it in print and a little goes a long way. * Evening Standard *

A writer at the height of her powers, Joyce Carol Oates takes a shiver of an incident by the scruff of its neck, and dazzles. -- Deborah Lawrenson