Insightful, disturbing, imaginative, and breathtaking in their lyrical precision, the stories in lovely, dark, deep display Joyce Carol Oates's magnificent ability to make visceral the terror, hurt, and uncertainty that lurks at the edges of ordinary lives. .

Sex with camel -- Mastiff -- Distance -- A book of martyrs -- Stephanos is dead -- The hunter -- The disappearing -- Things passed on the way to obligation -- Forked River Roadside Shrine, South Jersey -- The jesters -- Betrayal -- Lovely, Dark, Deep -- Patricide.