Fiction

Black Death smirked on the sofa next to my daughter. A strange mixture of young boy, black greasepaint and safety pins. I tried to imagine him primping for this date,…

On my right, stairs stretch up to tall narrow doorways set in sheer faces of red brick. In my back pocket is a glossy fold-out map of Antiques Row, and…

We watched old films the summer my father left us. “Catharsis,” my mother would say, and then my sister and I would curl up next to her on the couch.…

My mother refused to accept Zack as my live-in boyfriend. She said our relationship was vague. Marriage, her topic of conversation at every Sunday dinner, worried me more than irritated…

I spent a lot of time in Totland, and the details of the park are still clear to me, like the plum trees which weren’t supposed to bear fruit but…

1. Begin by swearing you’ll never have an affair. You’re just not the type. You’re happily married and you sneer at spouses who indulge in extramarital affairs. Sleazy, sex crazed…

His new girlfriend brings Paige to the rehearsal. When they arrive, Paige is already wearing her costume, a hot pink leotard with a matching pink skirt. The skirt and the…

Most days I feel about a minute from a mess. The thought surprises Claire. She opens her eyes and registers the baby’s cry. 6:12 a.m. Mentally she does the math.…

It was not the yipping of coyotes that carried the Werthers into Bisbee, Arizona, as the sun slid its palm across the Mule Mountains. What swept them along was the…

The phone screeched in my ear. I jerked up in bed. It screeched again. I squinted at the clock. Three a.m. Nothing good comes from a call at three a.m.…

It started with corn. One of their new neighbors, a bent-backed woman with a face like that of those apple dolls Lisette had made long ago when she was a…