Black Water [Paperback]

The Pulitzer Prize-nominated novel from the author of theNew York Timesbestselling novelWe Were the Mulvaneys

“Taut, powerfully imagined and beautifully written,Black Waterranks with the best of Joyce Carol Oates’s already long list of distinguished achievements. It can be read in a single afternoon, but, like every good book, it continues to haunt us.”—The New York Times

Kelly Kelleher is an idealistic, twenty-six-year-old “good girl” when she meets the Senator at a Fourth of July party. In a brilliantly woven narrative, we enter her past and her present, her mind and her body as she is fatally attracted to this older man, this hero, this soon-to-be-lover.

Kelly becomes the very embodiment of the vulnerable, romantic dreams of bright and brave women—drawn to the power that certain men command—at a party that takes on the quality of a surreal nightmare. One of the acknowledged masters of American fiction, Joyce Carol Oates has written a bold tour de force that parts the black water to reveal the profoundest depths of human truth.Praise forBlack Water

“A powerfully imagined novel...it continues to haunt us.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Intense...signals another frontier opened with the sword of a master storyteller.”—Chicago Tribune

“Its power of evocation is remarkable.”—The New YorkerIn addition to many prize-winning and bestselling novels, includingWe Were the Mulvaneys, A Book of American Martyrs, Black Water, Because It Is Bitter and Because It Is My Heart, andBroke Heart Blues, Joyce Carol Oatesis the author of a number of works of gothic fiction includingHaunted: Tales of the Grotesque,a World Fantasy Award nominee; andZombie, winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror Novel, awarded by the HorrlÓ!