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Apples
David Guterson
‘He remembered the new, fresh, orchard country of his youth and the rows of apple trees his father had planted on the east bank of the Columbia River.’
Slips of Love
Allen Kurzweil
‘He gripped a paint roller in one hand, a bucket in the other, and was covering the month's graffiti with gray latex.’
The Giant of Cape Cod
Elizabeth McCracken
‘People think they’re interesting. That’s their first mistake.’
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.’