An Otto Penzler BookThe need for loveobsessive, self-destructive, unpredictabletakes us to forbidden places, as in the chilling world of Give Me Your Heart, a new collection of stories by the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates.In the suspenseful Strip Poker, a reckless adolescent girl must find a way of turning the tables on a gathering of increasingly threatening young menCan she outplay them? In the award-winning Smother! a young womans nightmare memory of childhood brings trouble on her professor-motherWhich of them will win? In Split/Brain a woman who has blundered into a lethal situation confronts the possibility of saving herselfWill she take it? In The First Husband, a jealous man discovers that his wife seems to have lied about her first marriage, and exacts a cruel revenge, years after the fact. In these and other powerful tales, children veer beyond their parents control, wives and husbands wake up to find that they hardly know each other, haunted pasts intrude upon uncertain futures, and those who bring us the most harm may be the nearest at hand. In ten razor-sharp stories, National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates shows that the most deadly mysteries often begin at home.