In addition to her novels and literary criticism, Joyce Carol Oates is also a master of the short story. In these 16 stories, all previously published in publications as diverse as "The New Yorker", the "Guardian" (UK) and "Ellery Queen" magazine, Oates explores the power of violence, loss, and grief to shape not only the psyche but the soul. The sixteen stories of Sourland beautifully resonate with the author's trademark fascination for the unpredictable in the midst of the 'ordinary' - the commingling of sexual love and violence, the tumult of family life, a predilection for dark humour, and a gift for voice. The inhabitants of Sourland are as varied as a desperate man who dons a jack-o-lantern head as a prelude to a most curious sort of courtship, a story of a stabbing many times recounted in the life of a lonely young girl, a beguiling young woman librarian whose amputee state attracts a married man and father, a girl hopelessly in love with her renegade, incarcerated cousin, and a professor's wife who finds herself tragically isolated at the party she is hosting for her beloved husband's colleagues.