Powerful and plausible...Beattie is a remarkable talent. -- Chicago Sun-Times These fifteen stories by Ann Beattie garnered universal critical acclaim on their first publication, earning Beattie the reputation as the most celebrated new voice in American fiction. Today these stories -- "A Vintage Thunderbird;" "The Lawn Party, " " La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans," to name a few -- seem even more powerful, and are read and studied as classics of the short-story form. Spare and elegant, yet charged with feeling and with the tension of things their characters cannot say, they are masterly portraits of improvised lives. "Ann Beattie's stories are the most perceptive since Salinger's. They are not just good writing, not just true to life; they have wonder in them and vision." -- Mary Lee Settle "Superb." -- Boston Globe "Talented and sensitive...works of vivid honesty and insight." -- Washington Post Also by Ann Beattie, available in Vintage Contemporaries: Chilly Scenes of Winter, Distortions, Falling in Place, Love Always, Picturing Will