title: The Female of the Species: Tales of Mystery and Suspense
author:  Joyce Carol Oates 
description: As evidenced in this collection of nine stories, Oates's imagination is still fertile, feverish and macabre. These females are killers, either by their own hands or through manipulation. To be sure, they have provocation: abandonment, betrayal, abuse, the loss of reason to passion or obsession. In "Hunger," the longest and best of the stories, a rich but neglected corporate wife succumbs to a sexual obsession that ends in murder. Suspenseful and <I>Lolita</I>-like, "Doll: A Romance of the Mississippi," seduces with its lurid concept of a young prostitute who is pimped by her father and degenerates into a homicidal psychopath. Another father tries futilely to protect his frantic daughter from her cruel husband in the haunting "So Help Me God." It seems unlikely, however, that the six-year-old girl in "The Banshee" would be able to recognize the hors d'oeuvres at her mother's party as "Russian caviar [and]... smoked salmon on Swedish crackers," and such details undermine plausibility. Set against the familiar territory of upstate New York towns, but also Manhattan's Park Avenue, rich enclaves on Cape Cod and a hospital ward, these are powerful stories, but best read in small doses. <I>(Jan.)</I> <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
  products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
  to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely
  coincidental.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Other novels by Frances Powell
  
  
  
  
  
  The Bodyguard
  
  
  
  
  
  Mystery of White Horse Lake
  
  
  
  
  
  Lady of the Wye
  
  
  
  
  
  Ghost of Tara
  
  
  
  
  
  A Ballysea Mystery Series:
  
  
  The O’Brien
  
  
  A Bad Wind Blowing
  
  
  The O’Brien: The Untold Story
  
  
  A Ballysea Christmas
  
  
  
  
  
  Chief Inspector Cam Fergus Mystery Series
  
  
  Lady of the Wye
  
  
  Death in the Royal Forest of Dean
  
  
  River Wye Dead & Breakfast
  
  
  
  
  
  Cover Design by Kim Bailey
  
  
  Copyright 2019 by Frances Powell
  
  
  _All rights_ reserved.
  
  
  eBook ISBN 978-1-54398-775-1
  
  
  _Note to Readers: British spelling has been used in this novel._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This book is dedicated to my husband, Russell Powell, for his patience and
  dedication with editing this book.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Contents
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 1](index_split_0