Sulfuric acid. That’s what Mrs Thomasin was thinking about when the phone rang: sulfuric acid. She had heard somewhere, perhaps on the television, about a man—a killer—who had used the substance on his victims. The acid as she remembered it caused a sort of liquidity, dissolving the muscles in half a day. She didn’t want…

My wife’s family is now my family, too. We are four months out from the miscarriage.  After a long, ear-blaring flight, we land in the country of my wife’s origin. From the hotel, we take a bus two hours outside the city to a dusty town. To a wilted house, to my mother-in-law’s. For dinner.…

I only remember the log house as a cold place, a steady chill whistling through apertures in the chinking. My sister and I shared a room there—the north half hers, the south mine. Her window looked onto a fishpond and a split-rail fence, mine onto a modern scarecrow—an inflatable tube man dancing in the distant…

Dad came home towing a caravan. Couldn’t pass it up, he said. Any grumbles Mum kept to herself. At least it wasn’t half a butchered lamb and no freezer space. We watched her face soften as she reimagined the family future. A sunny one with road trips and spontaneous weekends away.  Thing was, Dad had…

I. Before. I can remember when I was a little kid, maybe six or seven, how all of Dad’s buddies used to make a fuss over Claire.  “Incredible.”  “Astonishing.”  “Absolutely miraculous.”  Their words.  I constantly reminded them that a Pteranodon wasn’t technically even a dinosaur, but they didn’t care. She was a giant prehistoric bird…

When her girl body hit the water deep in the gorge where the river sliced through rock as if through a vein, disappearing with a smack that echoed through the stillness only to surface silent, bob motionless on the water, we felt relief. We didn’t believe her when she threatened to jump because everyone knows…

Bodies pressed against yours as you plugged your carry-on luggage into the overhead carriage. An arm went up beside you. You neither ducked nor frowned at the frowsty mix of sweat and deodorant. The last six months had hit you with too many unpleasantries for some mild body odor on a plane to matter. You…

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…