I Am No One You Know

Now in paperback, a new collection of short stories from bestselling and awardwinning author Joyce Carol Oates that Kirkus reviews described as "vintage Oates." I Am No One You Know contains nineteen startling stories that bear witness to the remarkably varied lives of Americans of our time. In "Fire," a troubled young wife discovers a rare, radiant happiness in an adulterous relationship. In "Curly Red," a girl makes a decision to reveal a family secret, and changes her life irrevocably. In "The Girl with the Blackened Eye," selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2001, a girl pushed to an even greater extreme of courage and desperation manages to survive her abduction by a serial killer. And in "Three Girls," two adventuresome N.Y.U. undergraduates seal their secret love by tracking, and protecting, Marilyn Monroe in disguise in Strand Used Books on a snowy evening in 1957. These vividly rendered portraits of women, men, and children, testify to Oates' compassion for the mysterious and luminous resources of the human spirit.