?Oates?s imagination is as unique, dystopian and vivid as Lewis Carroll?s? Rose Tremain Zero-sum games are played for lethal stakes in these arresting stories by one of America?s most acclaimed writers. A brilliant young philosophy student bent on seducing her famous philosopher-mentor finds herself outmaneuvered; diabolically clever high school girls wreak a particularly apt sort of vengeance on sexual predators in their community; a woman stalked by a would-be killer may be confiding in the wrong former lover; a young woman is morbidly obsessed by her unfamiliar new role as ?mother.? In the collection?s longest story, a much-praised cutting-edge writer cruelly experiments with ?drafts? of his own suicide. In these powerfully wrought stories that hold a mirror up to our time, Joyce Carol Oates has created a world of erotic obsession, thwarted idealism, and ever-shifting identities. Provocative and stunning, Zero-Sum reinforces Oates?s standing as a literary treasure and an artist of the mysterious interior life.