Movies have taught the woman that she can do this: Drive to a town outside of her own — fifty, sixty, or even one hundred miles away. Whatever distance puts her at least halfway between her town and another. She can park her car in the back, sign a fake name in the register. Pay…

EXPLANANDUM The details surrounding the blackout remain obscure. What I can say is that thousands of people, by the third or fourth day of the blackout, were to be seen walking the streets everywhere. Businesses were closed. Houses stayed dark through the night. People sought social contact, but no one had any news. Gossip ruled.…

per·cus·sion (pər-‘kə-shən) n. 1. The striking together of two bodies, especially when noise is produced. 2. The sound, vibration, or shock caused by the striking together of two bodies As they enter the hundredth day of peace negotiations without resolution, the Generals are allowed one luxury apiece. The General of the North asks for whisky…

Ebilene checked her e-mail for the third time that morning, but she had still received no response from the Crown Prince of Nigeria. Sure, the birds were singing their songs out to the sky — a pleasure that at her age eclipsed most others. Sure, the sun busily banished gray clouds from the sky. Sure,…

The sun went down and all the switchblades came out. A knife fight on every street corner. A hold up at every store unwise enough to stay open after dusk. Jones had knifed since he was a child. Still, he and Kegger weren’t as brutal as many knifers. They didn’t enjoy mutilation as much. They…

Mada hated bright lights, gaffers, video cameras on wheels, teleprompters, live studio audiences, and she only realized it right now, because she’d never been subjected to them before right now. Her heartbeat pummeled. Fifteen feet away the talk show host had her nose powdered and a lavalier mic clipped to the inside of her suit…

10. People don’t realize Mary Shelley’s monster isn’t ever actually referred to as Frankenstein in the story. The monster’s inventor, Victor Frankenstein, provides readers loads of great names with potential for traction, like Vile Insect, Daemon, Wretched Devil, and my personal favorite, Fiend. But still everyone calls him Frankenstein. I think that’s kind of messed…

I can never get lost. One thing I like about living in Kenmore Square next to Fenway Park right below the CITGO sign — you can see it from anywhere in the city. Beneath that glowing sign I first met my wife Tara, one of these hefty, big boned treasures, a six-footer with shiksa freckles.…

Merrill thinks about milk. “I was just a boy yesterday,” he says. “I feel like Tom Hanks. That movie can’t be just a movie. Life is so short.” Youth is a phantom limb, he thinks. “I can’t remember ever being this young.” Rosa says, “You’re not Tom Hanks.” I want to do everything all at…

Until Karen, he’d never met an adult who was afraid of the water, who didn’t know how to swim. This was just Kentucky — no ocean for miles — but still. Not long after he and his parents moved to Bardstown, into the big house with the big in-ground pool in the backyard, they seemed…

My old man used to tell me about rumors. He’d say that somebody wakes up in the morning and looks out a window at a clear sky and wishes for weather. And even if the weather doesn’t come, it is enough to start a rumor about it to make it real for people. + That…

When Magda was fourteen, she married her father. The ceremony was simple, packages of crepe paper and party favors tossed carelessly about the living room. She wore her sister’s white prom dress and her father wore a faded gray tuxedo from his college days. Her mother married them in a flowered sheet draped over her…