Among the Missing: Stories (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Dan Chaon

Ballantine Books

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • San Francisco Chronicle 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. Praise for Stay Awake “Eerily beautiful . . . [Chaon] is the modern day John Cheever.”—Boston Sunday Globe “Powerful and disturbing . . . The shocks in this collection are many.”—The Washington Post “Chaon is able to create fully realized characters in mere pages. . . . This collection is further proof that Chaon is one of the best fiction writers working right now.”—Omaha World-Herald “There are not many fiction writers who can do what Dan Chaon can do. . . . [He is] a literary force.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer “Intense and suspenseful . . . a highly recommended work, not to be missed.”—Library Journal (starred review) “Mesmerizing . . . gripping, masterful fiction.”—The Plain Dealer “Superbly disquieting.”—The New York Times Book Review Don’t miss the exclusive conversation between Dan Chaon and Emma Straub at the back of the book.

Stay Awake

Literature & Fiction

United States

Random House Publishing Group

You Remind Me of Me

Jonah Doyle is six years old. He lives with his mother, his grandfather and their dog Elizabeth in a yellow house in South Dakota. It is a house full of tensions. And then one sunny day in early spring, a terrible accident occurs that will change the course of Jonah's life. That accident sets in motion a course of events that unfolds over the course of this spellbinding novel. Jonah sets off to find his adopted brother, whom he has never met. His journey across America in search of his family, and his own identity, is unforgettable.

Contemporary

MURRAY JOHN PUBLISHE

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 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 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.

Literary

A Featured Alternate of the Book-of-the-Month Club and Quality Paperback Book Club With penetrating insight and a deep devotion to his characters, Pushcart and O. Henry Award-winning author 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 we become? How do we end up stuck in lives we never wanted? And how can we change the course of what seems inevitable?

Genre Fiction

Thorndike Press

Sleepwalk A Novel

Henry Holt and Company

Sleepwalk

Corsair

Darkness, both literal and psychological, holds its own unique fascination. Despite our fears, or perhaps because of them, readers have always been drawn to tales of death, terror, madness, and the supernatural, and no more so than today when a wildly imaginative new generation of dark dreamers is carrying on in the tradition of Poe and Lovecraft and King, crafting exquisitely disturbing literary nightmares that gaze without flinching into the abyss—and linger in the mind long after. Multiple award-winning editor Ellen Datlow knows the darkest corners of fiction and poetry better than most. Once again, she has braved the haunted landscape of modern horror to seek out the most chilling new works by both legendary masters of the genre and fresh young talents. Here are twisted hungers and obsessions, human and otherwise, along with an unsettling variety of spine-tingling fears and fantasies. The cutting edge of horror has never cut deeper than in this comprehensive showcase of the very best the field has to offer. Enter at your own risk. Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

The Best Horror of the Year Volume Five

Laird Barron

Lucy Taylor

margo-lanagan

Ramsey, Campbell

Night Shade

ABOUT THE BOOK  Wandering lonely through the snow streets of New York I stumbled on a thrift store that sold postcards by the yard I bought a mile and shipped them home so I could read Ten thousand ten-word tragedies, the lives these strangers lead To remind myself the things I need   Inspired by Frank Turner and his songs especially that evocative verse from Mittens the editors were delighted to learn that he really did find that box of postcards in a New York thrift store. Frank was kind enough to send us the box, and from it we chose a series of postcards and forwarded them to the writers in this book. Gaining inspiration from the postcards and their 'ten word tragedies', the contributors wrote an amazingly eclectic selection of tales moving, funny, horrific, bizarre, and delightful, these are the lives these strangers lead.   CONTENTS  I Am Here Michael Marshall Smith London Safe Stuart Neville The War Within Kelley Armstrong The New Boyfriend Scott Smith From the Living Room of Cottage 6 Josh Malerman Beat the Card Home Stephen Volk She Forgot The All, She Could Not Remember Anything But Longing Kelly Braffet Give Me Two Michael Koryta The Letter from Elsie Matt Bechtel I Hate to Leave This Delilah S. Dawson Howard Sturgis and the Letters and the Van and What He Found When He Went Back to His House Paul Tremblay The House in My Heart Rachel Autumn Deering Fort Lauderdale Rio Youers Broken For You Alyson Noel The Lions Keith Buckley The Same as the Air Alison Littlewood Lowcountry Tidings Dan Chaon Taproot Mike Carey Royal Gorge Frank Turner

Ten-Word Tragedies

Kelley Armstrong

Mike Carey

Paul Tremblay

MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH

Alyson Noël

Tim Lebbon

Frank Turner

Josh Malerman

Alison Littlewood

Rio Youers

Stephen Volk

Kelly Braffet

Christophen Golden

Rachel Autumn Deering

PS Publishing

NN Editore

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Books by Dan Chaon