Dan Chaon

The lives of three strangers interconnect in unforeseen ways–and with unexpected consequences–in acclaimed author Dan Chaon’s gripping, brilliantly written new novel. Longing to get on with his life, Miles Cheshire nevertheless can’t stop searching for his troubled twin brother, Hayden, who has been missing for ten years. Hayden has covered his tracks skillfully, moving stealthily from place to place, managing along the way to hold down various jobs and seem, to the people he meets, entirely normal. But some version of the truth is always concealed. A few days after graduating from high school, Lucy Lattimore sneaks away from the small town of Pompey, Ohio, with her charismatic former history teacher. They arrive in Nebraska, in the middle of nowhere, at a long-deserted motel next to a dried-up reservoir, to figure out the next move on their path to a new life. But soon Lucy begins to feel quietly uneasy. My whole life is a lie, thinks Ryan Schuyler, who has recently learned some shocking news. In response, he walks off the Northwestern University campus, hops on a bus, and breaks loose from his existence, which suddenly seems abstract and tenuous. Presumed dead, Ryan decides to remake himself–through unconventional and precarious means. Await Your Reply is a literary masterwork with the momentum of a thriller, an unforgettable novel in which pasts are invented and reinvented and the future is both seductively uncharted and perilously unmoored.

With his critically acclaimed Among the Missing and Fitting Ends, award-winning author Dan Chaon proved himself a master of the short story form. He is a writer, observes the Chicago Tribune, who can "convincingly squeeze whole lives into a mere twenty pages or so." Now Chaon marshals his notable talents in his much-anticipated debut novel.You Remind Me of Me begins with a series of separate incidents: In 1977, a little boy is savagely attacked by his mother's pet Doberman; in 1997 another little boy disappears from his grandmother's backyard on a sunny summer morning; in 1966, a pregnant teenager admits herself to a maternity home, with the intention of giving her child up for adoption; in 1991, a young man drifts toward a career as a drug dealer, even as he hopes for something better. With penetrating insight and a deep devotion to his characters, Dan Chaon explores the secret connections that irrevocably link them. In the process he examines questions of identity, fate, and circumstance: Why do we become the people that we become? How do we end up stuck in lives that we never wanted? And can we change the course of what seems inevitable?In language that is both unflinching and exquisite, Chaon moves deftly between the past and the present in the small-town prairie Midwest and shows us the extraordinary lives of "ordinary" people.From the Hardcover edition.

In this haunting, bracing new collection, Dan Chaon shares stories of men, women, and children who live far outside the American Dream, while wondering which decision, which path, or which accident brought them to this place. Chaon mines the psychological landscape of his characters to dazzling effect. Each story radiates with sharp humor, mystery, wonder, and startling compassion. Among the Missing lingers in the mind through its subtle grace and power of language.From the Trade Paperback edition.

A Vintage Contemporaries Original Includes: Jim Shepard's "Tedford and the Megalodon" Glen David Gold's "The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter" Dan Chaon's "The Bees" Kelly Link's "Catskin" Elmore Leonard's "How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman" Carol Emshwiller's "The General" Neil Gaiman's "Closing Time" Nick Hornby's "Otherwise Pandemonium" Stephen King's "The Tale of Gray Dick" Michael Crichton's "Blood Doesn't Come Out" Laurie King's "Weaving the Dark" Chris Offutt's "Chuck's Bucket" Dave Eggers's "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly" Michael Moorcock's "The Case of the Nazi Canary" Aimee Bender's "The Case of the Salt and Pepper Shakers" Harlan Ellison's "Goodbye to All That" Karen Joy Fowler's "Private Grave 9" Rick Moody's "The Albertine Notes" Michael Chabon's "The Martian Agent, a Planetary Romance" Sherman Alexie's "Ghost Dance" From the Trade Paperback edition.

Presents a collection of twenty-eight horror stories published in 2012, along with an essay that summarizes the achievements in the horror genre for novels, anthologies, magazines, poetry journals, and nonfiction works.

"An anthology of short fiction by 26 authors, each of whom was inspired by the legendary work of Ray Bradbury, including Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Audrey Niffenegger, Margaret Atwood, and more"--

"In 1983, Dustin Tillman's family--his parents and his aunt and uncle--were murdered in a shocking massacre. His foster brother, Rusty, was convicted of the crime, in a trial that was steeped in the "Satanic Cult" paranoia of the 1980s. Thirty years later, Rusty's conviction is overturned, and suddenly Dustin, now a psychologist, must question whether his testimony that imprisoned his brother was accurate. When one of his patients, an ex-cop, gets him deeply involved in a series of unsolved murders, Dustin's happy suburban life starts to unravel, as his uncertainties about his past and present life begin to merge"--

Apatow shares a collection of "writing from all disciplines-- short stories, poetry, essays, humor writing, journalism, memoir, cartoons, sketches, and even television pilots." Most were selected for their humor, but the author admits to selecting a few because they were so personally meaningful to him.

From the incomparable master of horror and suspense comes an electrifying collection of contemporary literary horror, with stories from twenty-five writers representing today's most talented voices in the genre.Horror writing is usually associated with formulaic gore, but New Wave horror writers have more in common with the wildly inventive, evocative spookiness of Edgar Allan Poe than with the sometimes-predictable hallmarks of their peers. Showcasing this cutting-edge talent, Poe's Children now brings the best of the genre's stories to a wider audience. Featuring tales from such writers as Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Carroll, Poe's Children is Peter Straub's tribute to the imaginative power of storytelling. Each previously published story has been selected by Straub to represent what he thinks is the most interesting development in our literature during the last two decades.Selections range from the early Stephen King psychological thriller "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet," in which an editor confronts an author's belief that his typewriter is inhabited by supernatural creatures, to "The Man on the Ceiling," Melanie and Steve Rasnic Tem's award-winning surreal tale of night terrors, woven with daylight fears that haunt a family. Other selections include National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon's "The Bees"; Peter Straub's "Little Red's Tango," the legend of a music aficionado whose past is as mysterious as the ghostly visitors to his Manhattan apartment; Elizabeth Hand's visionary and shocking "Cleopatra Brimstone"; Thomas Ligotti's brilliant, mind-stretching "Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story"; and "Body," Brian Evenson's disturbing twist on correctional facilities.Crossing boundaries and packed with imaginative chills, Poe's Children bears all the telltale signs of fearless, addictive fiction.From the Hardcover edition.

"Before the critically acclaimed novels Await Your Reply and You Remind Me of Me, Dan Chaon made a name for himself as a renowned writer of dazzling short stories. Now, in Stay Awake, Chaon returns to that form for the first time since his masterly Among the Missing, a finalist for the National Book Award. In these haunting, suspenseful stories, lost, fragile, searching characters wander between ordinary life and a psychological shadowland. They have experienced intense love or loss, grief or loneliness, displacement or disconnection--and find themselves in unexpected, dire, and sometimes unfathomable situations. A father's life is upended by his son's night terrors--and disturbing memories of the first wife and child he abandoned; a foster child receives a call from the past and begins to remember his birth mother, whose actions were unthinkable; a divorced woman experiences her own dark version of "empty-nest syndrome"; a young widower is unnerved by the sudden, inexplicable appearances of messages and notes--on dollar bills, inside a magazine, stapled to the side of a tree; and a college dropout begins to suspect that there's something off, something sinister, in his late parents' house. Dan Chaon's stories feature scattered families, unfulfilled dreamers, anxious souls. They exist in a twilight realm--in a place by the window late at night when the streets are empty and the world appears to be quiet. But you are up, unable to sleep. So you stay awake"--

In the 1930s and 1940s, Nancy Hale was a writer of literary best-sellers, beloved by critics, and expected by many to become one of the canonical writers of her era. Her fiction helped to shape the early identity of The New Yorker magazine and established her as an important voice in both the short story and the novel. By her death in 1988, however, all but one of her more than thirty books had gone out of print, and her star had faded into near obscurity.