Here are ten dys­func­tion­al­ly deli­cious, dis­turbing­ly delight­ful sto­ries from a mas­ter of the genre, Joyce Car­ol Oates. Using set­tings that slow­ly ease the read­er from every­day real­i­ty into night­mare ter­ri­to­ry and cre­at­ing char­ac­ters who slide grad­u­al­ly but irre­triev­ably out of con­trol, these sto­ries leave the read­er uneasy and slight­ly uncom­fort­able but def­i­nite­ly sat­is­fied. It’s not that the sto­ries are flaw­less; one or two sec­tions run a bit long and a few scenes should be more dif­fi­cult to pre­dict but, on the whole, it doesn’t mat­ter. The dia­logue is nat­ur­al and the char­ac­ters so well craft­ed that we squirm as we watch them head toward their fate. No, don’t do that, we silent­ly scream, wait, stop…but we, as read­ers, have no con­trol and no-con­trol is the stuff of which night­mares are made. In ​“Split/​Brain,” we know that the pro­tag­o­nist can change her fate in a moment; we also know that she won’t. The title sto­ry, ​“Give Me Your Heart,” puls­es and beats with a malev­o­lence that shocks but, some­how, also charms. Obses­sion is a recur­ring theme, most notably in the sto­ry of a man who destroys a hap­py, pro­duc­tive life as he devel­ops one on his wife’s long ago ex-hus­band. No, stop, wait, we sound­less­ly call. Don’t! But the char­ac­ters will and the char­ac­ters do.

This excel­lent col­lec­tion is read main­ly in a state of ​“fight or flight” and should prob­a­bly be avoid­ed at bedtime.