Joyce Carol Oates has 40 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 108 narrators, with an average listener rating of 3.2★ across 39 ratings. The most-rated is We Were the Mulvaneys.
We Were the Mulvaneys
Summary
Author of 27 novels, Joyce Carol Oates has won a National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award. She has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Readers around the world marvel at her ability to trace the subtle dynamics at work in the modern American family. Judd is the youngest of the four Mulvaney children - three boys and a girl - on their parents’ lush farm in upstate New York. In his childhood, Judd is swept along by the sheer energy of the Mulvaneys and their wealth of beloved family stories. But now, 30 years old, Judd looks back through his memories to tell the secrets that eventually ripped apart the fabric of his storybook family. Reminiscent of the works of Jane Smiley and Anne Tyler, Oates’ novel tells a tale that could be tragic, but is, instead, a ringing affirmation. Narrator Scott Shina’s performance perfectly captures the complex relationships within the Mulvaney clan.
©1996 The Ontario Review, Inc. (P)2001 Recorded Books, LLC
Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars.
Summary
The bonds of family are tested in the wake of a profound tragedy, providing a look at the darker side of our society by one of our most enduringly popular and important writers. Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. is a gripping examination of contemporary America through the prism of a family tragedy: When a powerful parent dies, each of his adult children reacts in startling and unexpected ways, and his grieving widow in the most surprising way of all. Stark and penetrating, Joyce Carol Oates’s latest novel is a vivid exploration of race, psychological trauma, class warfare, grief, and eventual healing, as well as an intimate family novel in the tradition of the author’s best-selling We Were the Mulvaneys.
©2020 Joyce Carol Oates (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Foxfire
Summary
Foxfire chronicles the life of five unforgettably real teenage girls in upstate New York in the 1950s. This controversial, topical tale captures the exhilaration of conspiracy, the blaze of youth, and the inevitable end of violence.
©1993 The Ontario Review, Inc. (P)1993 Penguin HighBridge Audio
Tails of Wonder and Imagination
Summary
What is it about the cat that captivates the creative imagination? No other creature has inspired so many authors to take pen to page. Mystery, horror, science fiction, and fantasy stories have all been written about cats. From legendary editor Ellen Datlow comes Tails of Wonder and Imagination, showcasing 40 cat tales by some of today's most popular authors. With uncollected stories by Stephen King, Carol Emshwiller, Tanith Lee, Peter S. Beagle, Elizabeth Hand, Dennis Danvers, and Theodora Goss and a previously unpublished story by Susanna Clarke, plus feline-centric fiction by Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, George R. R. Martin, Lucius Shepard, Joyce Carol Oates, Graham Joyce, Catherynne M. Valente, Michael Marshall Smith, and many others. Tails of Wonder and Imagination features more than 200,000 words of stories in which cats are heroes and stories in which they're villains; tales of domestic cats, tigers, lions, mythical part-cat beings, people transformed into cats, cats transformed into people. And yes, even a few cute cats. Table of Contents: "Through the Looking Glass (excerpt)" - Lewis Carroll"No Heaven Will Not Ever Heaven Be..." - A. R. Morlan "The Price" - Neil Gaiman "Dark Eyes, Faith, and Devotion" - Charles de Lint "Not Waving" - Michael Marshall Smith "Catch" - Ray Vukcevich "The Manticore Spell" - Jeffrey Ford "Catskin" - Kelly Link "Mieze Corrects an Incomplete Representation of Reality" - Michaela Roessner "Guardians" - George R. R. Martin "Life Regarded as a Jigsaw Puzzle of Highly Lustrous Cats" - Michael Bishop "Gordon, the Self-Made Cat" - Peter S. Beagle "The Jaguar Hunter" - Lucius Shepard "Arthur's Lion" - Tanith Lee "Pride" - Mary A. Turzillo "The Burglar Takes a Cat" - Lawrence Block "The White Cat" - Joyce Carol Oates "Returns" - Jack Ketchum "Puss-Cat" - Reggie Oliver "Cat in Glass" - Nancy Etchemendy "Coyote Peyote" - Carole Nelson Douglas "The Poet and the Inkmaker's Daughter" - Elizabeth Hand "The Night of the Tiger" - Stephen King "Every Angel is Terrifying" - John Kessel "Candia" - Graham Joyce "Mbo" - Nicholas Royle "Bean Bag Cats(R)" - Edward Bryant "Antiquities" - John Crowley "The Manticore's Tale" - Catherynne M. Valente "In Carnation" - Nancy Springer "Old Foss is the Name of His Cat" - David Sandner "A Safe Place to Be" - Carol Emshwiller "Nine Lives to Live" - Sharyn McCrumb "Tiger Kill" - Kaaron Warren "Something Better than Death" - Lucy Sussex "Dominion" - Christine Lucas "Tiger in the Snow" - Daniel Wynn Barber "The Dweller in High Places" - Susanna Clarke "Healing" - Benjamin Dennis Danvers "The Puma" - Theodora Goss
©2010 Ellen Datlow (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
My Life as a Rat
Summary
“A painful truth of family life: the most tender emotions can change in an instant. You think your parents love you but is it you they love, or the child who is theirs?” (Joyce Carol Oates, My Life as a Rat) Which should prevail: loyalty to family or loyalty to the truth? Is telling the truth ever a mistake, and is lying for one’s family ever justified? Can one do the right thing but bitterly regret it? My Life as a Rat follows Violet Rue Kerrigan, a young woman who looks back upon her life in exile from her family following her testimony, at age 12, concerning what she knew to be the racist murder of an African-American boy by her older brothers. In a succession of vividly recalled episodes, Violet contemplates the circumstances of her life as the initially beloved youngest child of seven Kerrigan children who inadvertently “informs” on her brothers, setting into motion their arrests and convictions and her own long estrangement. Arresting and poignant, My Life as a Rat traces a life of banishment from a family - banishment from parents, siblings, and the Church - that forces Violet to discover her own identity, to break the powerful spell of family, and to emerge from her long exile as a “rat” into a transformed life.
©2019 Joyce Carol Oates (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers
Blonde
Summary
She was an all-American girl who became a legend of unparalleled stature. She inspired the adoration of millions, and her life has beguiled generations of fans and fellow artists. The story of Norma Jeane Baker, better known by her studio name, Marilyn Monroe, has been dissected for more than three decades, but never has it been captured in a narrative as breathtaking and transforming as Blonde. In her most ambitious work to date, Joyce Carol Oates, one of America's most distinguished writers, reimagines the inner, poetic, and spiritual life of Norma Jeane Baker, the child, the woman, the fated celebrity, and tells the story in Norma Jeane's own voice: startling, rich, and shattering. Drawing on biographical and historical sources, Joyce Carol Oates evokes the distinct consciousness of the woman and the unsparing reflection of the myth, writing as she has never written before, ecstatic, completely absorbed, inhabited as if by the spirit of her extraordinary subject. Rich with psychological insight and disturbing irony, this mesmerizing narrative illumines Norma Jeane's lonely childhood, wrenching adolescence, and the creation of Marilyn Monroe. With fresh insights into the heart of a celebrity culture hypnotized by its own myths, Blonde is a sweeping novel about the elusive magic of a woman, the lasting legacy of a star, and the heartbreak behind the creation of the most evocative icon of the 20th century.
©2001 Joyce Carol Oates (P)2001 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Carthage
Summary
A young girl's disappearance rocks a community and a family in this stirring examination of grief, faith, justice, and the atrocities of war from Joyce Carol Oates, "one of the great artistic forces of our time" (The Nation). Zeno Mayfield's daughter has disappeared into the night, gone missing in the wilds of the Adirondacks. But when the community of Carthage joins a father's frantic search for the girl, they discover the unlikeliest of suspects…a decorated Iraq War veteran with close ties to the Mayfield family. As grisly evidence mounts against the troubled war hero, the family must wrestle with the possibility of having lost a daughter forever. Carthage plunges us deep into the psyche of a wounded young corporal haunted by unspeakable acts of wartime aggression, while unraveling the story of a disaffected young girl whose exile from her family may have come long before her disappearance. Dark and riveting, Carthage is a powerful addition to the Joyce Carol Oates canon, one that explores the human capacity for violence, love, and forgiveness, and asks if it's ever truly possible to come home again.
©2014 The Ontario Review, Inc. (P)2014 HarperCollinsPublishers
The Doll-Master
Summary
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 Galápagos, an affluent American wife experiences disorienting assaults on 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.
©2016 The Ontario Review, Inc. (P)2019 Tantor
Miao Dao
Summary
A girl comes of age with a vengeance - and help from a friend - in a tale of unnerving suspense from National Book Award winner and literary master Joyce Carol Oates. Bad things have been happening since Mia began to mature. Her dad left. Boys at school can’t keep their hands to themselves. A lecherous stepfather has moved in. Her only refuge is an abandoned lot on her suburban cul-de-sac, crawling with feral felines - one of which follows Mia home. Ghostly white and affectionate, she is Mia’s new companion and - as Mia’s tormenters will soon discover - her fierce protector. Joyce Carol Oates’s Miao Dao is part of Dark Corners, a collection of seven heart-stopping short stories by bestselling authors who give you so many new reasons to be afraid. Each story can be read in a single sitting. Or, if you have the nerve, you can listen all by yourself in the dark.
©2018 The Ontario Review, Inc. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense
Summary
The book opens with a woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, seated in front of the window in an apartment she cannot, on her own, afford. In this exquisitely tense narrative reimagining of Edward Hopper's Eleven A.M., 1926, the reader enters the minds of both the woman and her married lover, each consumed by alternating thoughts of disgust and arousal, as he rushes, amorously, murderously, to her door. In "The Long-Legged Girl", an aging, jealous wife crafts an unusual game of Russian roulette involving a pair of Wedgwood teacups, a strong Bengal brew, and a lethal concoction of medicine. Who will drink from the wrong cup, the wife or the dance student she believes to be her husband's latest conquest? In "The Sign of the Beast", when a former Sunday school teacher's corpse turns up, the blighted adolescent she had by turns petted and ridiculed confesses to her murder - but is he really responsible? Another young outsider, Horace Phineas Love Jr., is haunted by apparitions at the very edge of the spectrum of visibility after the death of his tortured father in "Night-Gaunts", a fantastic ode to H. P. Lovecraft.
©2018 The Ontario Review, Inc. (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Sacrifice
Summary
New York Times best-selling author Joyce Carol Oates returns with an incendiary novel that illuminates the tragic impact of sexual violence, racism, brutality, and power on innocent lives and probes the persistence of stereotypes, the nature of revenge, the complexities of truth, and our insatiable hunger for sensationalism. When a 14-year-old girl is the alleged victim of a terrible act of racial violence, the incident shocks and galvanizes her community, exacerbating the racial tension that has been simmering in this New Jersey town for decades. In this magisterial work of fiction, Joyce Carol Oates explores the uneasy fault lines in a racially troubled society. In such a tense, charged atmosphere, Oates reveals that there must always be a sacrifice - of innocence, truth, trust, and, ultimately, of lives. Unfolding in a succession of multiracial voices, in a community transfixed by this alleged crime and the spectacle unfolding around it, this profound novel exposes what - and who - the "sacrifice" actually is, and what consequences these kinds of events hold for us all. Working at the height of her powers, Oates offers a sympathetic portrait of the young girl and her mother, and challenges our expectations and beliefs about our society, our biases, and ourselves. As the chorus of its voices - from the police to the media to the victim and her family - reaches a crescendo, The Sacrifice offers a shocking new understanding of power and oppression, innocence and guilt, truth and sensationalism, justice and retribution. A chilling exploration of complex social, political, and moral themes - the enduring trauma of the past, modern racial and class tensions, the power of secrets, and the primal decisions we all make to protect those we love - The Sacrifice is a major work of fiction from one of our most revered literary masters.
©2015 Joyce Carol Oates (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers
The Perfectionist
Summary
Prize-winning author Joyce Carol Oates turns her satiric eye to Tobias Harte, a man obsessed with perfection in everything from ethics to egg salad. Rollicking comedy ensues as Harte struggles with his highly imperfect family and friends.
©2009 L.A. Theatre Works (P)2009 L.A. Theatre Works
WordTheatre: Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, Volume 1
Summary
WordTheatre, the short story performance specialists, casts the perfect actors to bring great contemporary writing to life. The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America. Recorded live at benefit performances for their Fellowships endowment, Volume 1 of this stunning collection contains nine outstanding examples of the short story. Though varying in theme and tone, they share a brilliant pedigree. Vincent Piazza reading "Forky" by Andre Dubus III Amber Tamblyn reading "The Kiss" by Pamela Painter CCH Pounder reading "By Love Possessed" by Lorna Goodison Sean Young reading "Not the Plaster Casters" by Janice Eidus Samantha Mathis reading "Three Girls" by Joyce Carol Oates Robert David Hall reading "The Pass" by Steve Almond Amy Irving reading "The Dead Boy at Your Window" by Bruce Holland Rogers Jackson Rathbone reading "The Bank Robbery" by Steven Schutzman John Heard reading "Tomorrow’s Bird" by Ian Frazier Produced and directed by Cedering Fox; edited by Sara Bencivenga; mixed and mastered by Theo Mondle; music composed by Greg Chun. WordTheatre gives voice to great writing. We are an innovative, internationally recognized, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring empathy, curiosity, and conversation through powerful and entertaining performances, both live and recorded, of the world's best contemporary literature. We aim to ignite a passion for reading, writing, and self-expression in our community and in future generations.
©2014 Cedering Fox (P)2014 WordTheatre
First Words
Summary
Most kids write stories. Only a few of them grow up to be successful authors. But before there was Carrie, there was Johnathan and the Witchs. And before there was Rabbit Angstrom, Toyota Dealer, there was Manuel Cirarro, famous detective. Could we have seen the seeds of success in Stephen King's and John Updike's juvenilia? Here is a funny and surprisingly informative gathering of childhood creations by today's most celebrated writers - those who are amused by and happy to share their own early efforts. These young writers are the same people who now dominate the best seller lists and occupy the most celebrate spots on bookshelves in our stores, libraries and homes. Authors include Margaret Atwood, Roy Blount Jr., Pat Conroy, Gail Godwin, Stephen King, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, William Styron, Amy Tan, John Updike, Gore Vidal, and Paul Mandelbaum (editor).
©2009 Phoenix (P)2009 Phoenix
Give Me Your Heart
Summary
The need for love - obsessive, self-destructive, unpredictable - takes us to forbidden places, as in the chilling world of Give Me Your Heart, a new collection of stories by the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates. In the suspenseful "Strip Poker", a reckless adolescent girl must find a way of turning the tables on a gathering of increasingly threatening young men - can she "outplay" them? In "Smother!" a young woman's nightmare memory of childhood brings trouble on her professor mother - which of them will win? In "Split/Brain" a woman who has blundered into a lethal situation confronts the possibility of saving herself--will she take it? In "The First Husband", a jealous man discovers that his wife seems to have lied about her first marriage, and exacts a cruel revenge, years after the fact. In 10 razor-sharp stories, National Book Award winner Oates shows that the most deadly mysteries often begin at home. Narrated by Angela Brazil, Susan Boyce, Stephen R. Thorne, Rachael Warren, Parker Leventer, Fred Sullivan, Emily Woo Zeller, Matt Clevy, and Mauro Hantman.
©2010 The Ontario Review (P)2010 BBC Audiobooks America
Sourland
Summary
A gripping and moving new collection of stories that reimagines the meaning of loss - through often unexpected and violent means. Joyce Carol Oates is not only one of our most important novelists and literary critics, she is also an unparalleled master of the short story. Sourland - 16 previously uncollected stories that explore how the power of violence, loss, and grief shape both the psyche and the soul - shows us an author working at the height of her powers. With lapidary precision and an unflinching eye, Oates maps the surprising contours of “ordinary” life. From a desperate man who dons a jack-o’-lantern head as a prelude to a most curious sort of courtship, to a “story of a stabbing” many times recounted in the life of a lonely girl; from a beguiling young woman librarian whose amputee state attracts a married man and father, to a girl hopelessly in love with her renegade, incarcerated cousin; from a professor’s wife who finds herself tragically isolated at a party in her own house, to the concluding title story of an unexpectedly redemptive love rooted in radical aloneness and isolation, each story in Sourland resonates beautifully with Oates’s trademark fascination for the unpredictable amid the prosaic—the co-mingling of sexual love and violence, the tumult of family life—and shines with her predilection for dark humor and her gift for voice.
©2010 Joyce Carol Oates (P)2010 HarperCollins Publishers
Five Short Stories by Women
Summary
L.A. Theatre Works presents Five Short Stories by Women: A quintet of tales from some of America’s most distinguished female authors. "Life after High School", by Joyce Carol Oates, read by Sarah Drew: Oates takes us to a time in the late 1950s, to South Lebanon High School, and shows us the lives of three people at a time of self-discovery. "The Banks of the Vistula", by Rebecca Lee, read by Emily Bergl: An ambitious student wants desperately to make her mark in a linguistics class. Published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill ©2013. "Never Marry a Mexican", by Sandra Cisneros, read by Rita Moreno: The story of a woman named Clemencia who remembers her family, her parents' culture, and her affair with a married man.* "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried", by Amy Hempel, read by Lynn Collins: What do you say to someone on their deathbed? Amy Hempel addresses this question head-on, as a young woman describes her visit to a dying friend. "Once Upon a Time", by Nadine Gordimer, read by Alex Kingston: This is anything but a fairy tale. It’s more of a dystopian fantasy - with overtones of the racial inequality in Gordimer’s native South Africa. *From WOMAN HOLLERING CREEK. Copyright © 1991 by Sandra Cisneros. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Vintage Books and by Vintage Español as EL ARROYO DE LA LLORONA, translation, © 1996 by Liliana Valenzuela. Available on Random House Audiobook read by the author. By permission of Susan Bergholz Literary Services, New York City and Lamy, N.M. All rights reserved. Mixing Engineer: Mark Holden for The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood.
©2016 L.A. Theatre Works (P)2016 L.A. Theatre Works
Big Mouth & Ugly Girl
Summary
Matt Donaghy has always been a Big Mouth. But it's never gotten him in trouble, until the day Matt is accused of threatening to blow up Rocky River High School. Ursula Riggs has always been an Ugly Girl. A loner with fierce, staring eyes, Ursula has no time for petty high school stuff like friends and dating, or at least that's what she tells herself. Ursula is content with minding her own business. And she doesn't even really know Matt Donaghy. But Ursula is the only person who knows what Matt really said that day...and she is the only one who can help him. In her first novel for young adults, acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates has created a provocative and unflinching story of friendship and family, and of loyalty and betrayal.
©2002 Joyce Carol Oates (P)2002 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
High Crime Area
Summary
In the title story, a white aspiring professor is convinced she is being followed. No need to panic - she has a handgun stowed away in her purse, just in case. But when she turns to confront her black male shadow, the situation isn't what she expects. In "The Rescuer" a promising graduate student detours to inner-city Trenton, New Jersey, to save her brother from a downward spiral. But she soon finds out there may be more to his world than to hers. And in "The Last Man of Letters" the world-renowned author X embarks on a final grand tour of Europe. He has money, fame, but not a whole lot of manners. A little thing like etiquette couldn't bring a man like X down, could it? In these and five other biting and beautiful pieces, Oates confronts, one by one, the demons within us, demonstrating that sometimes, it's not the human side that wins out. Contents: "The Home at Craigmillnar", read by Ray Chase "High", read by Donna Postel "Toad-Baby", read by Luci Christian "Demon", read by Chris Patton "Lorelei", read by Tamara Marston "The Rescuer", read by Julia Whelan "The Last Man of Letters", read by Ray Chase "High Crime Area", read by Julia Whelan
©2014 Original material, The Ontario Review, Inc. Recorded by arrangement with John Hawkins and Associates, Inc. (P)2014 HighBridge Company
The Joyce Carol Oates Collection
Summary
Eight highly diverse works from one of America’s most prolific and versatile authors. This collection includes an exclusive dramatization of Oates’ best-selling novel American Appetites; two comedic plays, The Perfectionist and The Truth Teller; four short plays (Gulf War, Black, The Key, and Tone Clusters); as well as her libretto for Black Water: An American Opera, composed by John Duffy. American Appetites: The façade of an affluent suburban couple crumbles under the weight of tragedy and scandal in this exclusive dramatization of Joyce Carol Oates’ best-selling novel. Cast: Lisa Akey, Keith Carradine, Alastair Duncan, Paul Eiding, Anna Gunn, Dan Lauria, Jean Louisa Kelly, Frank Muller, B.J. Ward, Elizabeth Ward Land, Liza Weil, and Tegan West. The Perfectionist: Joyce Carol Oates turns her satiric eye to Tobias Harte, a man obsessed with perfection in everything from ethics to egg salad. Rollicking comedy ensues as Harte struggles with his highly imperfect family and friends. Cast: Barbara Bosson, Annabeth Gish, Harold Gould, Valerie Landsburg, David Schwimmer, and David Selby. The Truth Teller: Joyce Carol Oates’ hilarious take-off on a classic Southern play begins when liberated Hedda arrives home to visit the family estate, ruled by the family’s tyrannical patriarch, “Tiny” Culligan. Cast: Charles Durning, Arthur Hanket, Gary Kroeger, Marsha Mason, Priscilla Pointer, William Schallert and JoBeth Williams. Black Water - An American Opera: A tragic and beautiful opera based on the Chappaquiddick scandal. Libretto by Joyce Carol Oates, with music by John Duffy. Cast: David Lee Brewer, Reid Bruton, Stephanie Buckley, Karen Burlingame, Kimberly Graham, Linda Kerns, Erin Langston, Patrick Mason, John Savarese, and Rob Shacklett. Gulf War (one-act play): An affluent young couple, entertains an older couple for an evening of cocktails and politics during the Gulf War. But as the evening continues, the conversation take a bizarre and absurd tone. Cast: Edward Asner, Stephanie Dunnam, Nan Martin, and Joe Spano. Black (one-act play): In this evening of cocktails and dinner, a couple anxiously awaits the arrival of an ex-husband. As the wine glasses are drained, the evening becomes dark and intense, revealing the true colors of the characters in this eerie love triangle. Cast: Stephanie Dunnam, Rif Hutton and Joe Spano. The Key (one-act play): A hilarious perverse encounter between Melissa, a vacationing suburban housewife, recently separated from her husband, and Edwin, a prosperous businessman. Cast: Edward Asner, Hector Elizondo, Don Reed, Joyce Van Patten, and JoBeth Williams. Tone Clusters (one-act play): A chilling tragi-comedy that takes the form of an interview between a middle-aged, middle-class American couple and the media. Cast: Edward Asner, Hector Elizondo, Don Reed, Joyce Van Patten and JoBeth Williams.
Public Domain (P)2011 L.A. Theatre Works