when it comes to describing women and little girls brutalized and murdered, joyce carol oates has never been squeamish nor superstitiously fearful of what she writes will have effects within her own life or spread more violence in the world than already exists. in the lead story, Black Dahlia and White Rose first voice interviews of persons close to the murder and dismemberment of the woman in hollywood, known as the black dahlia are heard. two of the voices, the black dahlia speaks from beyond the grave, and the woman known as the white rose is the starlet marilyn monroe, her roommate.the stories are arranged in four sections. this is the world of joyce carol oates, of which she is master architect—her control of space, the stark language descriptively lacking in color, the tone and tension of terror and the sense that the worse imaginable is possible seeps from the first story to the five stories of the second part of the book, each story set up to expect something horrible. the worst feared is always lurking in the next sentence, but what does occur is something revealed about the women and teenaged girls and the occasional male, the absent father, the teenaged daughter, the single mother, a cast appearing in story after story.the women in the three stories in the third quarter are either married to successful men or successful in their own right. Roma! is a story in homage to the memory of john updike. the couple, david and alexis, on vacation abroad, similar to the material with which updike worked, are from updike’s home, beverly farms, massachusetts.the remaining two stories of the last quarter are set inside the walls of a prison. San Quentin takes place inside the head of a physically and mentally malformed killer. the more expansive Anniversary follows a retired university professor and her young eco-activist cohort on their first anxiety filled day as teachers of a class for prisoners.reading the publication acknowledgements show how oates let nothing go to waste, the longer, more polished stories were published in major literary publications, smaller more unconventional pieces went to smaller, specialized presses.having now collected more than a score of short story volumes, her fans know what to expect, new readers intrigued by her proliferate writing career, wanting to sample her short stories, could start here as well as with any other collection.