If every life is a river, then it’s little wonder that we do not even notice the changes that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea. One day you look around and...

They say that just before you die your whole life flashes before your eyes, but that’s not how it happened for me.

Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe.

The greatest tragedy that can befall a man is never to know who he really is.

The most difficult thing about writing; is writing the first line.

When you’ve been struck by lightning as many times as I have, you start to expect the worst pretty much all the time.

Deep down, Story Easton knew what would happen if she attempted to off herself—she would fail It was a matter of probability. This was not a new thing, failure. She was, had always been, a...

If the devil ever raised a garden, the Everglades was it.

On top of everything else, Boobie’s got the clap.

On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in bowl.

There once was a woman named Story Easton who couldn’t decide if she should kill herself, or eat a double cheeseburger.

Does such a thing as “the fatal flaw,” that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

Fifteen years ago I killed my sister.

Dear Anyone Who Finds This, Do not blame the drugs.

There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

This story about good food begins in a quick-stop convenience market.

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

I don’t like killing, but I’m good at it. Murder isn’t so bad from a distance, just shapes popping up in my scope. Close-up work though – a garrotte around a target’s neck or a...

Jett Gallatin expected trouble in Alsop, Texas—but not zombies.

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?

This is how it feels to die: It starts from outside and works its way in.

Simon Glass was easy to hate. I never knew exactly why, there was just too much to pick from. I guess, really, we each hated him for a different reason, but we didn’t realize it...

On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and...

Die Welt ist wie Wasser, scharlachrot und sanft gefärbt mit hellem Himmel. Und manchmal sind die Träume, die sich tief in den vergessenen Liedern unserer Kindheit verbergen, wie die Pfade in den Tiefen Wäldern, von...

Goldenrod Moram had a first name that sounded like it belonged in the middle of a fairy tale, where she would be the dazzling princess in need of rescuing.

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,” Papa would say, “she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.

Die Welt ist gierig, und manchmal umschließen Nebel unsere Herzen, bis wir uns nicht einmal mehr daran erinnern können, wann unsere Träume zu sterben begannen.

If you want vampires and werewolves, faeries, fallen angels or zombies, you won’t find them here. I know a real-life monster.

The truly revolutionary promise of our nation’s founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H.

Toward the end of February 1954, James Beard was at work in his Greenwich Village kitchen doing what he most loved to do: cooking delicious meals.

Die Welt ist gierig, und manchmal verschwinden Menschen in ihrem Schlund, ohne jemals wieder gesehen zu werden.

I was about thirteen when I started letting boys feel me up.

In Santiago, the capital of the kingdom of Chile, at the moment of the great earthquake of 1647 in which many thousands lost their lives, a young Spaniard called Jeronimo Rugera was standing beside one...

Our story opens where countless stories have ended in the last twenty-seven years: with an idiot—in this case, Rebecca Atherton, head of the After the End Times Irwins, winner of the Golden Steve-o Award for...

Die meisten Lügen sind wahr und spinnen sich von ganz allein, kaum jemand kannte diese Wahrheit besser als Colin Darcy. Wenn man erst einmal der Melodie der Worte zu lauschen beginnt, dann pfeift man sie...

I should probably start with the blood.

Feast or famine. My plate is suddenly full.

My story ended where so many stories have ended since the Rising: with a man—in this case, my adoptive brother and best friend, Shaun—holding a gun to the base of my skull as the virus...

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.

The family landed in the Western Hemisphere in the person of Roger Blake Wolfe, who arrived with a price on his head.