Fifteen years ago, in 1975, Genna Hewett-Meade's college roommate died a mysterious, violent, terrible death. Minette Swift had been one of the few black girls at an exclusive women's librarl arts college near Philadelphia. As Genna reconstructs the months, weeks, and hours leading up to Minette's tragic death, she is also forced to confront her own identity within the social framework of the time.

"In the waning days of the 1970s, the lives of several residents of Detroit and its affluent white suburbs are drawn together following the disappearance of yet another child. Hannah, a wife and mother, begins an affair with a darkly charismatic stranger; Mikey, a young street hustler, finds himself on an unexpected mission to rectify injustice; and then there's the child serial killer known as Babysitter, an enigmatic and elusive figure at the periphery...

Flattered by the attentions of a senator she has met at a Fourth of July beach party on Grayling Island, Kelly Kelleher accepts a ride from him, taking a first step toward her final confrontation with death.

Ten suspenseful stories explore with chilling accuracy the ways in which evil enters our lives: In "Hi! Howya Doin!" an intrusive jogger meets with an abrupt fate; in "The man who fought Roland LaStarza" a young woman's romantic view of her girlhood is devastated by her father's confession; and in "Valentine, July heat wave" a man prepares a gruesome surprise for the wife who has betrayed him. In the memorable title story, a young woman tries to rescue...

"A brilliant young philosophy student bent on seducing her famous philosopher-mentor finds herself outmaneuvered; diabolically clever high school girls wreak a particularly apt sort of vengeance on sexual predators in their community; a man returns from the dead to haunt his grieving wife; a young mother finds herself captivated by her own motherhood. In the collection's longest story, a much-praised writer cruelly experiments with "drafts" of his...

Legs Sadovsky leads a girl gang called Foxfire during 1955 in her upstate New York hometown.

"In twenty-two disturbing tales of crime and suspense, two hitmen in a depressed rust belt town struggle with a job gone wrong. A girl witnesses a horrifying accident and carries it with her for the rest of her life. Medical students bring a severed foot to a college party. Five-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Joyce Carol Oates has made a career of exploring the forbidden corners of human experience, and the stories collected here, spanning her first...

In helping two fawns find their mother in the woods, Muffin the brave cat becomes lost himself and must try to find his way home again.