-Oates-s imagination is as unique, dystopian and vivid as Lewis Carroll-s- ROSE TREMAIN''A master storyteller'' THE TIMES''Electric'' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWZero-sum games are played for lethal stakes in these arresting stories by one of America-s most acclaimed writers.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 woman stalked by a would-be killer may be confiding in the wrong former lover; a young woman is morbidly obsessed by her unfamiliar new role as -mother.- In the collection-s longest story, a much-praised cutting-edge writer cruelly experiments with -drafts- of his own suicide.In these powerfully wrought stories that hold a mirror up to our time, Joyce Carol Oates has created a world of erotic obsession, thwarted idealism, and ever-shifting identities. Provocative and stunning, Zero-Sum
