Four bone-chilling stories of suspense and horror from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates.

This new collection brings the reader into the despair and uncertainty of youth, exploring the terror of the unknown through tales of misadventure and psychological suspense.

In 1969, two young girls and their friends venture deep into the woods to explore an abandoned sanatorium. Decades earlier, a massacre took place there at the hands of the patients. Then they discover it might not be as abandoned as they thought.

A tormented boy, bullied by his family and peers, descends into hate and isolation as he fantasizes about revenge against them, until a walk home from school changes his life forever.

Having been forgotten at school pickup, a seventh-grader arrives at the home of her divorced father for a weekend stay, only to uncover a horrific secret.

A fateful cruise aboard a historic sailing ship brings terrible consequences upon an eleven-year-old and her family.

With her uncanny ability to imbue every word with dread, Oates leaves the reader second-guessing what might be real and what might be the delusions of an anguished mind