The National Book Award–winning author of The Falls, Black Water, and Blonde here spins fictional endings to the life stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Ernest Hemingway, adopting their literary styles or the flavor of their personal writings.

"[Joyce Carol] Oates is by turns mischievously witty, superbly macabre, and exquisitely sensitive as she parlays bravado literary criticism into shivery stories that undermine iconic figures.... This is an audaciously subversive collection in which Oates, like Shirley Jackson and Tennessee Williams, combines sophisticated horror with profound insight into the human condition."—Booklist (starred review)