But the central branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library was still a place of wonders to Tess, even if the book budget had been slashed and the hours cut. Her parents had made a...

Being a mother was like being trapped in the first fifteen minutes of a horror film. Everything was fine, lovely. But there was this persistent sense of dread.

But you were a goody-goody, you said.’ ‘Even goody-goodies think about such things. In fact, I would say that’s what defines us. We’re always thinking about the things we don’t dare do, figuring out where...

I would prefer,” Pat said, his voice a little stiff, as if he expected resistance, “that I be the cosigner on the loan, if you go through with this. I know I’m not a famous...

It must be nice to be so strong and to think it’s because you’re so good, that you live right and eat right, so you deserve your health and happiness. But there is such a...

There’s a serendipity to real life that the Internet can’t duplicate. Do you use the library? For anything? Well, sometimes you end up picking up the book next to the one you were looking for,...

Reading was not a fallback position for her but an ideal state of being.

There was no protection, no quota system when it came to luck. It was like that moment in math when a child learns that the odds of heads or tails is always one-in-two, no matter...

The past was worth remembering and knowing in its own right. It was not behind us, never truly behind us, but under us, holding us up, a foundation for all that was to come and...

…Baltimore. It’s imperfect. Boy, is it imperfect. And there are parts of its past that make you wince. It’s not all marble steps and waitresses calling you ‘hon,’ you know. Racial strife in the sixties,...

It was as if his fingers knew things, but they couldn’t show him unless they were moving, touching. He had to think it was similar for carpenters and writers, and he knew it was the...

Whatever you want, at any moment, someone else is getting it. Whatever you have, someone else is longing for.

Going to college don’t make you from somewhere, any more than a cat born in an over can call itself a biscuit.