"Presents a collection of stories that explores the musings of a writer, a prisoner, a student, and others who consider how their lives might have unfolded differently had they made different choices."--Publisher description.

Two hitmen in a depressed rust belt town struggle with a job gone wrong. A girl witnesses a horrifying accident and carries it with her for the rest of her life. Medical students bring a severed foot to a college party. Five-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Joyce Carol Oates has made a career of exploring the forbidden corners of human experience, and the stories collected here, spanning her first three decades as a writer, are among her most unsettling...