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Description
Joyce Carol Oates pulls out all the stops in this chilling female-centric noir collection featuring brand-new writing from Margaret Atwood, Aimee Bender, Edwidge Danticat, and more.
“Each voice is different, each story providing its own appeal, its own approach to the nature of crime, and in most instances, what it means to live in a female body in a largely hostile world.” —Brooklyn Rail
Joyce Carol Oates, a queenpin of the noir genre, has brought her keen and discerning eye to the curation of an outstanding anthology of brand-new top-shelf short stories (and poems by Margaret Atwood!). While bad men are not always the victims in these tales, they get their due often enough to satisfy readers who are sick and tired of the gendered status quo, or who just want to have a little bit of fun at the expense of a crumbling patriarchal society. This stylistically diverse collection will make you squirm in your seat, stay up at night, laugh out loud, and inevitably wish for more.
Featuring brand-new stories by: Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood (poems), Valerie Martin, Aimee Bender, Edwidge Danticat, Sheila Kohler, S.A. Solomon, S.J. Rozan, Lucy Taylor, Cassandra Khaw, Bernice L. McFadden, Jennifer Morales, Elizabeth McCracken, Livia Llewellyn, Lisa Lim, and Steph Cha.
About the Author
JOYCE CAROL OATES is the author of many works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. She is the editor of New Jersey Noir, Prison Noir, A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers, and Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers. Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award, PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Humanities Medal, and a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
Praise For…
Fifteen stories (and six ditties by Margaret Atwood) that view the conventions of noir fiction through female eyes. The most surprising aspect, given all the writers are women, is that the victims of crime/betrayal/despair are as likely to be shes as hes. Drowning, stabbing, shooting, beheading: the fun is endless.
— The Times of London
But of course, in the end, it isn’t the themes or the innovations on the format of the short story anthology that make the tales collected in Cutting Edge most ‘feel’ as if you were reading Joyce Carol Oates herself. It is the writing. The tight plots and fresh, flowing prose that go about their business until—snap!—the story’s well-oiled mousetrap does its job.
— New York Journal of Books
‘Is there a distinctive female noir?’ asks Oates in her introduction. This collection may not settle that question, but it goes a long way toward supplying candidates for an emerging canon. There are 15 stories here, all but one of them new, and half a dozen new poems . . . the average [story] is high enough to satisfy readers of all genders.
— Kirkus Reviews
The indefatigable Joyce Carol Oates gathers a strong list of names for Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers. Emerging and established authors provide attention-grabbing short works: especially notable are Edwidge Danticat’s story on the quotidian horror of domestic violence, Bernice L. McFadden’s comic take on the appropriation of racial friendship, and Lisa Lim’s illustrations of a grotesque marriage.
— Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
This collection enlivens . . . flattened archetypes by retelling the noir narrative from the new perspectives of teenage girls, women hired hands, and mothers of children.
— BookRiot, included in 9 of the Best Noir Fiction Retellings