Oates, Joyce Carol 1938-

We were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates ( Book )
61 editions published between 1996 and 2011 in 8 languages and held by 4,445 libraries worldwide
A family of six disintegrates after a daughter is raped by a high-school student. It happens to the wealthy Mulvaneys in upstate New York. The disgrace--there is some question if it was rape--sends the father to drink and financial ruin, the girl leaves home, the others follow. By the author of What I Lived For.

Black water by Joyce Carol Oates ( Book )
56 editions published between 1992 and 2009 in 10 languages and held by 2,983 libraries worldwide
Flattered by the attentions of a senator she has met at a Fourth of July beach party on Grayling Island, Kelly Kelleher accepts a ride from him, taking a first step toward her final confrontation with death.

The falls : a novel by Joyce Carol Oates ( Book )
49 editions published between 2004 and 2008 in 7 languages and held by 2,920 libraries worldwide
A stunning, major achievement from Joyce Carol Oates, "one of the great artistic forces of our time" (The Nation). A haunting story of the powerful spell Niagara Falls casts upon two generations of a family, leading to tragedy, love, loss, and, ultimately, redemption. A man climbs over the railings and plunges into Niagara Falls. A newlywed, he has left behind his wife, Ariah Erskine, in the honeymoon suite the morning after their wedding. "The Widow Bride of The Falls," as Ariah comes to be known, begins a relentless, seven-day vigil in the mist, waiting for his body to be found. At her side throughout, confirmed bachelor and pillar of the community Dirk Burnaby is unexpectedly transfixed by the strange, otherworldly gaze of this plain, strange woman, falling in love with her though they barely exchange a word. What follows is their passionate love affair, marriage, and children, a seemingly perfect existence. But the tragedy by which their life together began shadows them, damaging their idyll with distrust, greed, and even murder. What unfurls is a drama of parents and their children; of secrets and sins; of lawsuits, murder, and, eventually, redemption. As Ariah's children learn that their past is enmeshed with a hushed-up scandal involving radioactive waste, they must confront not only their personal history but America's murky past: the despoiling of the landscape, and the corruption and greed of the massive industrial expansion of the 1950s and 1960s. Set against the mythic-historic backdrop of Niagara Falls, Joyce Carol Oates explores the American family in crisis, but also America itself in the mid-twentieth century. As in We Were the Mulvaneys, a "darkly engrossing novel" (Washington Post Book World), she examines what happens when the richly interwoven relationships of parents and their children are challenged by circumstances outside the family. The Falls is a love story gone wrong and righted, and it alone places Joyce Carol Oates definitively in the company of the great American novelists.

Them by Joyce Carol Oates ( Book )
83 editions published between 1969 and 2008 in 11 languages and held by 2,873 libraries worldwide
Loretta Wendall and her two children experience violence and poverty in Detroit from the Depression in the 1930s to the riots of 1967.

The gravedigger's daughter : a novel by Joyce Carol Oates ( Book )
33 editions published between 2007 and 2009 in 6 languages and held by 2,808 libraries worldwide
The daughter of a German high school teacher who was forced to work as a gravedigger after immigrating to upstate New York, Rebecca begins a life-changing pilgrimage throughout America in the wake of a prejudice-motivated tragedy.

Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart by Joyce Carol Oates ( Book )
26 editions published between 1990 and 1996 in 3 languages and held by 2,796 libraries worldwide
Iris Courtney, a young white woman living in upstate New York in the decade prior to the civil rights movement, begins a clandestine relationship with Jinx Fairchild, a black man who had defended her in a fatal street fight with a white man.

American appetites by Joyce Carol Oates ( Book )
44 editions published between 1989 and 2011 in 8 languages and held by 2,725 libraries worldwide
An affluent, upper-class family breaks apart in the late 1980s when scandal and tragedy erupt.

Bellefleur by Joyce Carol Oates ( Book )
46 editions published between 1980 and 2010 in 8 languages and held by 2,709 libraries worldwide
A wealthy and notorious clan, The Bellefleurs live in a region not unlike the Adirondacks, in an enormous mansion on the shores of mythic Lake Noir.

You must remember this by Joyce Carol Oates ( Book )
31 editions published between 1987 and 2002 in 4 languages and held by 2,690 libraries worldwide
The story of the Stevicks, an ordinary American family of the 1950s, revealing the sleeping furies that are hidden beneath the respectable surface.

Blonde : a novel by Joyce Carol Oates ( Book )
62 editions published between 1999 and 2011 in 15 languages and held by 2,523 libraries worldwide
T.O.C.: Prologue: 3 August 1962 / The Child: 1932-1938 / The Girl: 1942-1947 / The Woman: 1949-1953 / "Marilyn": 1953-1958 / The Afterlife: 1959-1962.