Fiction
Recommended
The Last Day of Spring
Laurie had wanted for a long time to visit Jen. When Mama took David, the baby, to visit their favorite aunt she and Carol complained. “I know you want to see her,” Mama explained, “but…
The Quilt
The quilt had been magnificent once. Passed down through the years like a sacrament between mother and daughter, it had been made by Sarah’s great grandmother and her friends—all of them from Manchester. On long…
The Gift
On a snowy evening, Gerard de Valois stepped from a tram near Quai Marcellis in the Belgian city of Liege. He positioned his hat more firmly, tucked his scarf tightly into the collar of his…
The Renovation of Marsha Fletcher
Marsha crumpled the letter into a ball and hurled it across the living room. It caromed off the TV screen and rolled a few feet before settling in the middle of the carpet. Once again…
The Snowdrift, the Swan
In those Idaho summers, Maggie drove a tractor and sat on her hands in the movies, hiding her callouses from the fresh-faced college boys she dated. She worried about her peeling nose and ate nothing…
Feeding the Fox: A Parable
“Many religious people are deeply suspicious. They seem—for purely religious purposes, of course—to know more about iniquity than the Unregenerate.” Rudyard Kipling, Witches of the Night When the rabbits built Hilltown, they had a special…
Roger Across the Looking Glass
The process is as invariable and explicable as the engineered logic of a machine. Yet for all its biological transparence, to Roger Talmage, educated, institutionally devout, and forty-two, the quite ordinary adjustment of his eyes…
The Sweetness of Certain Things
Even now, sometimes, he looks up from what he is doing and stares, unseeing, because some sound, some word, sometimes nothing at all, has brought her back. Her name whispers through his mind, and there…
Aunt Betsy
She was my great-aunt on my father’s side and I hated her. She was fat. I She used two long crochet hooks to tie her shoes. Everybody knew it. Unless, of course, I was around.…
Much of a River
I guess it wasn’t really much of a river, only thirty feet wide or so where it had enough fall to ripple over the rocks. Except during the spring runoff. Then it filled and sometimes…