At the heart of Sarah Bower’s beguiling Lines and Shadows is the clever and self-deprecating Ginny Matlock, a talented mathematician recruited to work at a secretive nuclear testing facility off the coast of East Anglia in the 1960s. Her initiation into this outpost of the Ministry of Defence is anything but smooth. Self-conscious about her…

At least that’s what Cassie told me before the end, when neither of us could admit what we both knew to be true. We were eating at the table away from screens, a futile effort to reconnect. She told me about how herds in India, Sri Lanka, and South Africa have been observed staying with…

Today it’s washers and dryers day. We filled the truck last night, the loading dock shining with sooty light. Appliances puzzle-pieced in place according to reverse unloading schedule. Drive an hour and a half to the farthest place first. The sun not up yet. The roads dim and sparse. Arrive in Battle Creek to deliver…

The first sinkhole appeared on Main Street overnight, where once had stood a covered manhole rusted with car oil, corroded by bird droppings. Soon more holes cropped up between fuchsia bougainvilleas, quaint storefronts, under parked cars blocking wheelchair ramps. Metal, as if chewed by mandibles, rang throughout most neighborhoods in the screeching night. In the…

She used to dream about her teeth falling out. That was before she married a Vermonter and moved north to a town with no name. Next to her husband in bed, she dreamt about explosions and unfinished tasks. She dreamt about not finding her way back to her hotel room; not getting Maps to work…

When the doctor hands the braying baby to her parents, he tells them to think of it as a sign from God. He tells them that if you try hard enough, you can find God in most things. They try, but all they see is a human baby with a horse’s head, a daughter who…

This is the summer that Meena realizes she isn’t a heroine in one of those nineteenth-century English novels. Maybe it’s the sticky-sweet smell of popsicles or the scorching concrete between the pool and snack bar. Or the chlorine and the oily sunscreen that slicks every surface—cash register, door knob, the pool bathroom’s sea-foam tiles. When…

I heard Bruce Springsteen for the first time before I was born, sitting upright in the womb like the world’s most eager listener, my dad playing his music through speakers, I would learn later, we could barely afford. My dad, the musician, who never played Springsteen himself as though it would be sacrilegious to do…

No wax figure has ever seen a movie. Has ever complained about the exorbitant prices at the concession stand. Has ever eaten most of the popcorn during the previews. Their hands have never emerged from the warm paper bag, thin ribbons of melted wax joining their fingers to the buttered kernels. No wax figure has…

He spent his twenties the star of a bad novel. How strange and unworldly to age that way, his twenties like another planet. While the sun did a slow roll in those dimly lit years.  Was he a hero? He couldn’t tell. Just because everyone looked real, and there were bar scenes and wing men,…

When you fall asleep the ocean in your head is slick and glazed, but overnight fog rolls in. You wake to foghorns, problems announcing themselves in the muted dark. I’m here. I’m here. Steer clear. An article to unravel, data to enter, seventeen texts to answer. The warnings barely register. Today you will stub your…

The trucker liked labels, so he wrote “hat” on his hat, “oil” on the can in the vault, and “vault” on the vault itself. “You already know what those things are,” complained the man with his thumb stuck out. The trucker wrote “hitchhiker” on the complainer and pulled him into the cab marked “cab.” They…