Download or read book Await Your Reply written by Dan Chaon and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book You Remind Me of Me written by Dan Chaon and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2004-05-25 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Among the Missing written by Dan Chaon and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2009-11-04 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Ill Will written by Dan Chaon and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2018-01-09 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Two sensational unsolved crimes—one in the past, another in the present—are linked by one man’s memory and self-deception in this chilling novel of literary suspense from National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon. Includes an exclusive conversation between Dan Chaon and Lynda Barry NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Wall Street Journal • NPR • The New York Times • Los Angeles Times • The Washington Post • Kirkus Reviews • Publishers Weekly “We are always telling a story to ourselves, about ourselves.” This is one of the little mantras Dustin Tillman likes to share with his patients, and it’s meant to be reassuring. But what if that story is a lie? A psychologist in suburban Cleveland, Dustin is drifting through his forties when he hears the news: His adopted brother, Rusty, is being released from prison. Thirty years ago, Rusty received a life sentence for the massacre of Dustin’s parents, aunt, and uncle. The trial came to epitomize the 1980s hysteria over Satanic cults; despite the lack of physical evidence, the jury believed the outlandish accusations Dustin and his cousin made against Rusty. Now, after DNA analysis has overturned the conviction, Dustin braces for a reckoning. Meanwhile, one of Dustin’s patients has been plying him with stories of the drowning deaths of a string of drunk college boys. At first Dustin dismisses his patient's suggestions that a serial killer is at work as paranoid thinking, but as the two embark on an amateur investigation, Dustin starts to believe that there’s more to the deaths than coincidence. Soon he becomes obsessed, crossing all professional boundaries—and putting his own family in harm’s way. From one of today’s most renowned practitioners of literary suspense, Ill Will is an intimate thriller about the failures of memory and the perils of self-deception. In Dan Chaon’s nimble, chilling prose, the past looms over the present, turning each into a haunted place. “In his haunting, strikingly original new novel, [Dan] Chaon takes formidable risks, dismantling his timeline like a film editor.”—The New York Times Book Review “The scariest novel of the year . . . ingenious . . . Chaon’s novel walks along a garrote stretched taut between Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock.”—The Washington Post
Download or read book Sleepwalk written by Dan Chaon and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sleepwalk is a high speed and darkly comic road trip through a near future America with a big-hearted mercenary, from beloved and acclaimed award-winning novelist Dan Chaon. “[Chaon] does madcap well and likes his characters, even the killers—especially the killers.”—The New York Times Book Review A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An NPR “Book of the Day” A USA Today “Must Read” Sleepwalk’s hero, Will Bear, is a man with so many aliases that he simply thinks of himself as the Barely Blur. At fifty years old, he’s been living off the grid for over half his life. He’s never had a real job, never paid taxes, never been in a committed relationship. A good-natured henchman with a complicated and lonely past and a passion for LSD microdosing, he spends his time hopscotching across state lines in his beloved camper van, running sometimes shady often dangerous errands for a powerful and ruthless operation he’s never troubled himself to learn too much about. He has lots of connections, but no true ties. His longest relationships are with an old rescue dog that has post-traumatic stress and a childhood friend as deeply entrenched in the underworld as he is, who, lately, he’s less and less sure he can trust. Out of the blue, one of Will's many burner phones heralds a call from a twenty-year-old woman claiming to be his biological daughter. She says she’s the product of one of his long-ago sperm donations; he’s half certain she’s AI. She needs his help. She’s entrenched in a widespread and nefarious plot involving Will’s employers, and for Will to continue to have any contact with her increasingly fuzzes the line between the people he is working for and the people he’s running from. With his signature blend of haunting emotional realism and fast-paced intrigue, Dan Chaon populates his fractured America with characters who ring all too true. Gazing both back to the past and forward to an inevitable-enough-seeming future, Sleepwalk examines where we’ve been and where we’re going and the connections that bind us, no matter how far we travel to dodge them or how cleverly we hide.
Download or read book Fitting Ends and Other Stories written by Dan Chaon and published by Triquarterly Books. This book was released on 1995 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dan Chaon's first collection offers thirteen deft stories detailing the panicked angst of the American generation now approaching thirty. His characters are unnerved by the discrepancy between their youthful expectations and adult reality; they long for understanding and acceptance but are thwarted by failed love, family disruptions, dull work, and sexual confusion. His perfect pitch captures voices that still believe in life, but can't quite manage their lives.
Download or read book The End of the World Is Bigger than Love written by Davina Bell and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-02 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A breathtakingly original novel about love and destruction, from an award-winning Australian children’s author.
Download or read book Stay Awake written by Dan Chaon and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Last Time They Met written by Anita Shreve and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2001-04-10 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the last time Linda and Thomas meet, at a charmless hotel in a distant city, to the moment, thirty-five years earlier, when a chance encounter on a rocky beach binds them fatefully together, this hypnotically compelling novel unfolds a tale of intense passion, drama, and suspense. The Last Time They Met is a singularly ambitious and accomplished work by one of today's most widely celebrated novelists.
Download or read book The Lace Reader written by Brunonia Barry and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-06 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every gift has a price . . . every piece of lace has a secret. Towner Whitney, the self-confessed unreliable narrator, hails from a family of Salem women who can read the future in the patterns in lace, and who have guarded a history of secrets going back generations. Now the disappearance of two women is bringing Towner back home to Salem—and is bringing to light the shocking truth about the death of her twin sister.
Download or read book You re Not Proper written by Tariq Mehmood and published by HopeRoad. This book was released on 2015-03-19 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Frances Lincoln ‘Diverse Voices’ Children’s Book Award 2014Karen thinks she's not proper white.Her dad is Pakistani and her mother is white Christian, and somehow she feels as if she doesn't quite fit in... anywhere. So she's made a choice: she's switching sides.Karen’s going to convert to Islam to find her true identity.But Shamshad, her Hijab-wearing school mate, isn’t making things easy for her. What's her deal, anyway? Is Shamshad really any more proper than herself?Trouble and turmoil await in the old textile mill town of Boardhead East, as school battles are replaced by family troubles, name calling turns to physical confrontation and cataclysmic secrets are unveiled.Set against a backdrop of seething Islamaphobia, You're Not Proper is the first in the Striker series, written by Tariq Mehmood and Pete Kalu to shine a light on issues of identity, religion, politi and class affecting young people today - a unique new series in young adult fiction.‘You're Not Properis a real insight into communities more often talked about than listened to. But it’s not just an important book - it's full of heart and a cracking good read as well. Highly recommended!’ Melvin Burgess‘Contemporary and hard-hitting,You're Not Properis the story of two girls with one religion and two very different lifestyles ... High on impact and highly engaging, it truly is a story of our age.’ Jake Hope, critic, librarian and coordinator of the Lancashire Children’s Book of the Year Award
Download or read book The Ghost Bride written by Yangsze Choo and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a Netflix Mandarin original drama! From the New York Times bestselling author of The Night Tiger, a Reese’s Book Club pick Yangsze Choo’s stunning debut, The Ghost Bride, is a startlingly original novel infused with Chinese folklore, romantic intrigue, and unexpected supernatural twists. Li Lan, the daughter of a respectable Chinese family in colonial Malaysia, hopes for a favorable marriage, but her father has lost his fortune, and she has few suitors. Instead, the wealthy Lim family urges her to become a “ghost bride” for their son, who has recently died under mysterious circumstances. Rarely practiced, a traditional ghost marriage is used to placate a restless spirit. Such a union would guarantee Li Lan a home for the rest of her days, but at what price? Night after night, Li Lan is drawn into the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, where she must uncover the Lim family’s darkest secrets—and the truth about her own family. Reminiscent of Lisa See’s Peony in Love and Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter, The Ghost Bride is a wondrous coming-of-age story and from a remarkable new voice in fiction.
Download or read book Crossings written by Alex Landragin and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A sparkling debut. Landragin’s seductive literary romp shines as a celebration of the act of storytelling." —Publishers Weekly "Romance, mystery, history, and magical invention dance across centuries in an impressive debut novel." —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) "Deft writing seduces the reader in a complex tale of pursuit, denial, and retribution moving from past to future. Highly recommended." —Library Journal (Starred Review) Alex Landragin's Crossings is an unforgettable and explosive genre-bending debut—a novel in three parts, designed to be read in two different directions, spanning a hundred and fifty years and seven lifetimes. On the brink of the Nazi occupation of Paris, a German-Jewish bookbinder stumbles across a manuscript called Crossings. It has three narratives, each as unlikely as the next. And the narratives can be read one of two ways: either straight through or according to an alternate chapter sequence. The first story in Crossings is a never-before-seen ghost story by the poet Charles Baudelaire, penned for an illiterate girl. Next is a noir romance about an exiled man, modeled on Walter Benjamin, whose recurring nightmares are cured when he falls in love with a storyteller who draws him into a dangerous intrigue of rare manuscripts, police corruption, and literary societies. Finally, there are the fantastical memoirs of a woman-turned-monarch whose singular life has spanned seven generations. With each new chapter, the stunning connections between these seemingly disparate people grow clearer and more extraordinary. Crossings is an unforgettable adventure full of love, longing and empathy.
Download or read book The Other written by Thomas Tryon and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NYRB Classics presents the landmark psychological horror novel about 13-year-old twins living in a bucolic New England town—one good and the other very, very evil. “A whirlpool of Oh-My-God horror.” —Ira Levin, author of Rosemary’s Baby Holland and Niles Perry are identical 13-year-old twins. They are close, close enough, almost, to read each other’s thoughts, but they couldn’t be more different. Holland is bold and mischievous, a bad influence, while Niles is kind and eager to please, the sort of boy who makes parents proud. The Perrys live in the bucolic New England town their family settled centuries ago, and as it happens, the extended clan has gathered at its ancestral farm this summer to mourn the death of the twins’ father in a most unfortunate accident. Mrs. Perry still hasn’t recovered from the shock of her husband’s gruesome end and stays sequestered in her room, leaving her sons to roam free. As the summer goes on, though, and Holland’s pranks become increasingly sinister, Niles finds he can no longer make excuses for his brother’s actions. Thomas Tryon’s best-selling novel about a homegrown monster is an eerie examination of the darkness that dwells within everyone. It is a landmark of psychological horror that is a worthy descendent of the books of James Hogg, Robert Louis Stevenson, Shirley Jackson, and Patricia Highsmith. “. . . will doubtless become one of the classics of horror tales, comparable to The Turn of the Screw.” —Dorothy B. Hughes, Los Angeles Times
Download or read book Call Me Home written by Megan Kruse and published by Hawthorne Books. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Call Me Home has an epic scope in the tradition of Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves or Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and braids the stories of a family in three distinct voices: Amy, who leaves her Texas home at 19 to start a new life with a man she barely knows, and her two children, Jackson and Lydia, who are rocked by their parents’ abusive relationship. When Amy is forced to bargain for the safety of one child over the other, she must retrace the steps in the life she has chosen. Jackson, 18 and made visible by his sexuality, leaves home and eventually finds work on a construction crew in the Idaho mountains, where he begins a potentially ruinous affair with Don, the married foreman of his crew. Lydia, his 12-year-old sister, returns with her mother to Texas, struggling to understand what she perceives to be her mother’s selfishness. At its heart, this is a novel about family, our choices and how we come to live with them, what it means to be queer in the rural West, and the changing idea of home.
Download or read book The Beckoning Fair One written by Oliver Onions and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2004-08-01 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Miles ahead of the average ghost-story" — Sunday Times. A novelist retreats to an abandoned house in the heart of London, where he becomes enthralled by an 18th-century spirit — and where his contact with the outside world gradually diminishes. Acclaimed by such masters as Lovecraft as one of the best ghost stories in the English language.
Download or read book Other People We Married written by Emma Straub and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved story collection from the New York Times-bestselling author of The Vacationers, All Adults Here and This Time Tomorrow In Other People We Married, Straub creates characters as recognizable as a best friend, and follows them through moments of triumph and transformation with wit, vulnerability, and dazzling insight. In “Some People Must Really Fall in Love,” an assistant professor takes halting steps into the awkward world of office politics while harboring feelings for a freshman student. Two sisters struggle with old assumptions about each other as they stumble to build a new relationship in “A Map of Modern Palm Springs.” In “Puttanesca,” two widows move tentatively forward, still surrounded by ghosts and disappointments from the past. These twelve stories, filled with sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language, announce the arrival of a major new talent.
