Celestial Timepiece

See also: Recently published stories, essays, poems, and other articles by Joyce Carol Oates.

Double Trouble

By Joyce Carol Oates
Publication date: February 23, 2026

A double dose of gripping psychological suspense, pairing two complete novels and two rare short stories, from six-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Joyce Carol Oates. Two serial killers – one female, one male – murder in the name of a higher cause. Ideal for fans of Alice Munro, Ann Patchett and Anne Tyler.

This omnibus includes:

• STARR BRIGHT WILL BE WITH YOU SOON: Exotic dancer who moonlights as a serial killer of men who mistreat her travels across the country to hole up with her straitlaced twin sister and elude the law.
• “The Murderess”: Teen girl’s ambivalent relationship to older female relative who killed her husband.
• SOUL/MATE: Handsome young male serial killer falls for older woman and starts killing to further her interests.
• “An Unsolved Crime”: Old man remembers killing stepfather who abused his sister when they were children.

The Frenzy: Stories

By Joyce Carol Oates
Publication date: June 16, 2026

Frenzy (noun): a temporary madness; a violent mental or emotional agitation; intense usually wild and often disorderly compulsive or agitated activity

Joyce Carol Oates is a master of the short story and one of the legends of the form. Her collections of short fiction have twice been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and have won numerous awards, including the O. Henry Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Art of the Short Story. In The Frenzy: Stories, Oates plunges us into the lives of her characters at moments of crisis and confusion, when much of what they understand about themselves and those they love comes undone.

A young woman on a supposedly romantic weekend trip to Cape May, New Jersey, turns the tables on her older, married lover. A freak bicycle accident on a bridge haunts one family for decades. A girl jealous of her popular cousin discovers she is the lucky one. A widow waits at her riverside house for her dead husband’s return. A young man hiking in the woods comes upon a couple in a heated, possibly violent argument—should he intervene?

Suspenseful and psychologically astute, Oates’s short stories enthrall and captivate as they dissect her character’s deepest fears—revealing our own in turn. “Literature is a texture of words,” says Oates of her short fiction, “evoking life in the most vivid ways—psychologically, physically.” These new stories blazingly evoke life at its most vivid and perilous, when fate and free will intersect, and one ominous encounter or bad choice can be the difference between an ordinary day and the point of no return.

Image by Alicia A.L.