Little Bird of Heaven LP: A Novel

"Neither crime, nor punishment, the ultimate coupling in the novel serves as a triumph and a release on a scale and with the intensity we've come to expect from one of our country's premier writers."--NPR's All Things Considered

"Little Bird of Heaven starts with the urgency of thriller, then turns into something more existential as the years (and pages) go by...This is a tragedy on a classical scale...Oates has written a feminist novel with empathy for men, especially men without power, with no voice besides violence."--New York Times Book Review

"[This novel] is classic Oates. Its depiction of violence, families falling from grace and social class disparities, as well as its location, recall her 1996 bestseller, WE WERE THE MULVANEYS. Fans of Oates will delight in this offering and newcomers to her work will receive a first-class introduction."--BookPage

"Well-told and ultimately powerful."--The Onion

"A powerful novel...In Sparta she has created a fictional universe to stand beside Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County or Cheever's Shady Hill....Oates [is] our closest contemporary analogue to Hawthorne: lyrical, moral, unforgiving."--Washington Post

"Oates' 57th novel is a doozie....It's vintage Oates: tragic violence, outsize ambitions, dashed hopes, strained family bonds, manly-men roughing up sassy-yet-submissive women, and, of course, sex-crazed teenagers."--Elle

"An absorbing study of lust, trust, and an unsolved murder, Oates's gritty new mystery explores the attraction between the son of the victim and daughter of the accused."--Good Housekeeping

"[This is] the novelist at her brooding best . . . a seamless, satisfying tale of small-town life where...the long-smoldering relationships among the residents can often be like 'tangled roots, beneath the surface of the earth.'"--St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Readers are breathlessly along for the ride, never sure if Oates will let [her characters] reach redemption or have them fall prey to the hands of their violent, unforgiving upbringings."--New York Post

"[This novel]...has an unnerving clarity about the power of sexual desire...it cleaves to the mind like a strong memory, and after you've read it, you may find yourself dreaming about the imaginary town of Sparta, and wondering what the people are doing now."--Chicago Sun-Times

After Zoe Kruller is murdered, the Sparta, New York, police target her estranged husband Delray Kruller and her lover Eddy Diehl, leading the Krullers’s son Aaron and Eddy Diehl’s daughter Krista to become obsessed with one another, each believing the other’s father is guilty, until they must face each other again as adults. (General fiction). Simultaneous.