The Ruins of Contracoeur
and Other Presences
Joyce Carol Oates
Availability: In Print – Hardback
“To be fated, to be accursed—isn’t that also to be special?”
A group of resourceful young girls punish the men of a small town for unspeakable lusts by luring them to a derelict factory and into the toils of a bizarre contraption; a dead man tries to makes sense of a strange epiphany he experienced one day when out hiking amid gigantic ancient redwoods; and a state judge, fleeing disgrace, settles with his family on an isolated ruinous estate where some dread thing prowls in the night . . .
As Lisa Tuttle notes in her introduction, where most writers, as most people, tend to “settle down” as they age, to work within ever more constrained limits, Joyce Carol Oates’s remarkable imagination, in the sixth decade of her career, manifests no sign of such complacency. The six savage, glittering stories in this volume show it has, on the contrary, become ever more transgressive and restless.
Hardback edition limited to 500 copies.
Signed by Oates, Kehrli, and Tuttle.
Cover art by Meggan Kehrli
Introduction by Lisa Tuttle
ISBN: 978-1-78380-040-7 (hbk)
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of a number of collections of tales of the “uncanny” and “macabre”. These include Night-Gaunts, Dis mem ber, The Doll-Master, and the novellas Jack of Spades and A Fair Maiden. Her work has been included in the Best Fantasy and Horror and the Best American Mysteries anthologies. She is the recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for Horror Fiction as well as the National Book Award (US) and the National Medal for the Humanities. She lives and teaches in Princeton, New Jersey.
Read more“[The Ruins of Contracoeur] serves as a reminder of Oates’ talents and her key place in the worlds of literary and Weird fiction.” – The Fantasy Hive
“These tales . . . vividly exemplify the incisive, eclectic, often shocking vision of Joyce Carol Oates.” – Ghosts & Scholars
“Thrilling, complex and haunting.” – Lonesome Reader
The Ruins of Contracoeur and Other Presences by Joyce Carol Oates; cover art and design by Meggan Kehrli; introduction by Lisa Tuttle; edited by Brian J. Showers and Timothy J. Jarvis; copyedited by Jim Rockhill; typeset by Steve J. Shaw; published by Swan River Press.
Hardback: Published on 11 October 2021; limited to 500 copies of which 100 were embossed and hand numbered; signed by Joyce Carol Oates, Lisa Tuttle, and Meggan Kehrli; xiv + 209 pages; lithographically printed on 100 gsm paper; dust jacketed; illustrated Wibalin boards; sewn binding; head- and tail-bands; issued with one postcard; ISBN: 978-1-78380-040-7.
