A chilling volume of stories and novellas by Joyce Carol Oates, one of the world's greatest and most prolific writers. THE CORN MAIDEN is the gut-wrenching story of Marissa, a beautiful and sweet, but somewhat slow, 11-years-old girl with hair the colour of corn silk. HELPING HANDS, published here for the first time, begins with an apparently optimistic line: ""He came into her life when it had seemed to her that her life was finished. The powerful stories in this extraordinary collection further enhance Oates's standing as one of the world's greatest writers of suspense.