Books in Vintage Contemporaries series

For years Joan has been trying to forget her past, to find peace and satisfaction in her role as wife and mother. Few in her drowsy California suburb know her thrilling history: as a young American ballerina in Paris, she fell into a doomed, passionate romance with Soviet dance superstar Arslan Rusakov. After playing a leading role in his celebrated defection, Joan bowed out of the spotlight for good, heartbroken by Arslan and humbled by her own modest career. But when her son turns out to be a ballet prodigy, Joan is pulled back into a world she thought she'd left behind—a world of dangerous secrets, of Arslan, and of longing for what will always be just out of reach.

A San Francisco Chronicle and NPR Best Book of the Year The author of the acclaimed memoir The Suicide Index returns with a virtuosic collection of stories, each a stirring parable of the power of love and the impossibility of understanding it. Spanning centuries and continents, from eighteenth-century Vienna to contemporary America, Joan Wickersham shows, with uncanny exactitude, how we never really know what's in someone else's heart--or in our own.Review :Best Books of 2012, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Kirkus "Wise and courageous and often brilliant… breaks new ground in our perceptions of what a short story can be. Wonderfully imaginative and original.” – Boston Globe“An ode to heartbreak and regret…Wickersham's gift is for capturing the habits of mind that lead even smart people to deceive themselves…her book makes you slow down and listen, and then watch for people to reveal themselves.” – New York Times Book Review“Elegantly structured, emotionally compelling…Short stories don’t get much better than this.” – Kirkus“Do not mistake Wickersham’s exquisitely polished prose for good manners. Although she writes with a vintage grace…she is brutal and funny too…Divine.” – San Francisco Chronicle“Virtuosic…Wickersham [takes an] emotional cannonball into every single one of her characters. The doubts and tenderness they share are ones that only the finest fiction can create.” – Oprah.com “Book of the Week”“Wickersham makes a triumphant return to fiction…articulates subtleties of human behavior that ordinarily elude language altogether.” – Elle“Munro's and Wickersham's books are at the top of this year's pile.” – Chicago Tribune“So moving it will close your throat.” – Los Angeles Times“The prose is beautiful, and you feel those characters like real people.” – Cheryl Strayed“Wickersham…is a master of the written word and storytelling in all its forms.” – BookPage“Joan Wickersham has done it again: astonished, enchanted, and moved me…Like Alice Munro at her best.” – Julia Glass“Gorgeous, completely original…As soon as I finished it, I began to read it again.” – Andre Gregory“Poignant and insightful…Wickersham is as skilled as Alice Munro in maneuvering her characters, and the reader, through time…Highly recommended.” – Library Journal

As he did in New York Times bestseller Robopocalypse, Daniel Wilson masterfully envisions a stunning world where superhuman technology and humanity clash in surprising—and thrilling—ways. It’s the near future, and scientists have developed implants that treat brain dysfunction—and also make recipients capable of superhuman feats. Exploiting societal fears of the newly enhanced, politicians pass a set of laws to restrict the rights of “amplified” humans, instantly creating a new persecuted underclass known as “amps.” On the day that the Supreme Court passes the first of these laws, twenty-nine-year-old schoolteacher Owen Gray is forced into hiding, only dimly aware of the latent powers he possesses. To escape imprisonment, and to find out who he really is, Owen seeks out a community in Oklahoma where, it is rumored, a group of the most enhanced amps may be about to change the world—or destroy it.

Over the course of several months, eight people vanish from their homes in the same Japanese town, a single playing card found on each door. Known as “the Narito Disappearances,” the crime has authorities baffled—until a confession appears on the police’s doorstep, signed by one Oda Sotatsu, a thread salesman. Sotatsu is arrested, jailed, and interrogated, but he refuses to speak. Even as his family comes to visit, even as his execution looms, and even as a young woman named Jito Joo enters his cell, he maintains his vow of silence. And as a journalist’s obsession uncovers more to the story, Jesse Ball spins a wildly inventive and emotionally powerful take of unjust conviction and lost love.

NATIONAL BESTSELLERA dark and riveting story of the legacies—of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss—that haunt one family across the generations.Myra Lamb is a wild girl with mysterious, haint blue eyes who grows up on remote Bloodroot Mountain. Her grandmother, Byrdie, protects her fiercely and passes down “the touch” that bewitches people and animals alike. But when John Odom tries to tame Myra, it sparks a shocking disaster, ripping lives apart. "A fascinating look at a rural world full of love and life, and dreams and disappointment." --The Boston Globe"If Wuthering Heights had been set in southern Appalachia, it might have taken place on Bloodroot Mountain.... Brooding, dark and beautifully imagined." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Johannssens are a sailing family: adventurous, fanatical, and, for now, a complete and total mess. Ruby, a prodigiously talented skipper, has taken off for Africa. Bernard is god-knows-where at sea. And at thirty-one years old, Josh Johannssen, the middle child, is fixing up an old family boat and trying to figure out where it all went wrong. When Josh’s father coaxes his children home for one last yacht race, the Johannssens find themselves reunited under thrilling circumstances that will change the course of their lives. Before the Wind is a funny, tender, and big-hearted novel about a gifted, volatile family whose love for the sea rivals their love for each other.”

Have You Seen Marie? showcases the storytelling magic of Sandra Cisneros, beloved author of The House on Mango Street and winner of the 2018 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. This lyrically told, richly illustrated fable for adults is the tale of a woman's search, in the wake of her mother's death, for a missing cat-and a reminder that love, even when it goes astray, does not stay lost forever.

Here is Sandra Cisnero's greatly admired and best-selling novel of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Acclaimed by critics, beloved by children and their parents and grandparents, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, "The House on Mango Street" has entered the canon of coming-of-age classics even as it depicts a new American landscape. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, "The House on Mango Street" tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty. Esperanza doesn't want to belong - not to her run-down neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Esperanza's story is that of a young girl coming into her power, and inventing for herself what she will become. "The San Francisco Chronicle" has called "The House on Mango Street" "marvelous... spare yet luminous. The subtle power of Cisnero's storytelling is evident. She communicates all the rapture and rage of growing up in a modern world." It is an extraordinary achievement that will live on for years to come.

Entertainment Weekly Best Debut Novels 2017A wildly entertaining debut about a Brooklyn Heights wife and mother who has embezzled a small fortune from her children's private school and makes a run for it, leaving behind her trust fund poet husband, his maybe-secret lover, her two daughters, and a school board who will do anything to find her. Marion Palm prefers not to think of herself as a thief but rather "a woman who embezzles." Over the years she has managed to steal $180,000 from her children’s private school, money that has paid for European vacations, a Sub-Zero refrigerator they had to have, and state-of-the-art exercise equipment, gathering dust. When the school faces an audit, Marion pulls piles of rubber-banded cash from her basement and runs. Leaving her husband and two daughters to grapple with the consequences of her crime, and the mother-shaped hole in their house, Marion is on the lam, hiding in plain sight. Brilliantly skewering the mores of a status-obsessed society, and perfectly capturing the spirit of bourgeois Brooklyn Heights, this wildly entertaining debut novel features a “bad mom” you can’t help but love..

A brilliant novel that captures the dusty, dark, and beautiful world of small-time horse racing, where trainers, jockeys, grooms and grifters vie for what little luck is offered at a run-down West Virginia track. Tommy Hansel has a plan: run four horses, all better than they look on paper, at long odds at Indian Mound Downs, then grab the purse -- or cash a bet -- and run before anyone’s the wiser. At his side is Maggie Koderer, who finds herself powerfully drawn to the gorgeous, used up animals of the cheap track. She also lands in the cross-hairs of leading trainer Joe Dale Bigg. But as news of Tommy’s plan spreads, from veteran groom Medicine Ed, to loan shark Two-Tie, to Kidstuff the blacksmith, it’s Maggie, not Tommy or the handlers of legendary stakes horse Lord of Misrule, who will find what's valuable in a world where everything has a price.