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Farewell
Fae Myenne Ng
‘If Grandpa Leong had been a family man, there might have been real tears, a grieving wife draped in muslin, the fabric weaving around her like burned skin.’
Maximum Security
Robert O’Connor
‘Hot and hopeful under the May sun, air crinkling above the highway. Except my Ford Escort didn't care for the heat and flatlined a few hundred yards from home.’
Moscow, Idaho
Chris Offutt
‘Tilden stopped digging and wiped his sleeve across his forehead, leaving a brown smear on his skin.’
A Fan Letter
Stewart O’Nan
‘Before I begin I'd like to say that I'll try to remember everything as best I can, though sometimes I know it won't be right.’
The Driving Child
Mona Simpson
‘Staring out at the endless gray, Mary wrote a letter to her mother and told her she'd named the baby Jane, the name she'd years ago given her only doll.’
Xmas, Jamaica Plain
Melanie Rae Thon
‘I’m the one who got away, the one you don’t know; I’m the long hairs you find under your pillow, nested in your drain, tangled in your brush.’
Future Shock
Kate Wheeler
‘Althea's neck strained. Her black, small eyes shifted swiftly, blinked, then fixed evilly on Ingrid.’
Taken Out of Context
Paul Beatty
‘I’d never been in a room full of black people unrelated to me before.’
The Lawyer’s Story
Paul Theroux
‘Bow tie, blue shirt, tight suit, cowboy boots—he was overdressed for Singapore.’
The Butcher of Bermondsey
Graham Swift
‘Then he led me out into the noise and the glare and the stink.’