Fiction

Before they had ever lived in the house, somebody’s useless cow had sickened and died in the shed next door. The shaggy rope that tethered her still lay in a corner, so when Sonia figured out that her older sister, Goldie, was having to do with a boy, she got up in the night, disentangled…

The intervention is not Marilyn’s idea, but it might as well be. She is the one who has talked too much. And she has agreed to go along with it, nodding and murmuring an all right into the receiver while Sid dozes in front of the evening news. They love watching the news. Things are…

When I was young our winter-wear wouldn’t have permitted anyone to look sexy. The look then was like the inflated figures in a Macy’s parade, puffy and down-stuffed, colorful rubber boots, with pompons on the hats our mothers knitted, matching mittens hanging on yarn from our coat sleeves. Fashion then didn’t have in mind sprinting…

I begin to see the possibilities in dehydration just about now. Dehydration-a tantalizing word. Fog without moisture, space without stars or solar magnificence. Somewhere hidden are heaps of stone our guide found last week and, in our group’s wandering about, lost again. An effluvium of dust has hung over us for two months now, almost…

When Pia walks into his flat in Bombay, she thinks it’s a joke. She looks up at Adil, the man she has agreed to marry, waiting for him to ask the rightful occupant of this miniature box to step out of his hiding place. "So what do you think?" he says, mistaking her smile for…

When his wife told him to get out of the house that had been hers, anyway, long before they were married, Valdek Moore looked in the paper and found a semi-furnished one-bedroom at Linden Pines. The development’s name suggested an estate of elegant foliage, right for a term of penance, when it was really a…

1. Topsy, needy This is about an elephant, electrocuted one hundred years ago. Her name was Topsy, and she was famous at a time when people were still amazed by an elephant. Plus she did tricks. She could stand on her back legs, raising her front legs, wearing a gauze tutu. She was a star…

Dear Laird Hunt, It was with great interest that I read the description of your novel and the accompanying biographical material that appeared this weekend in the monthly literary supplement to our otherwise dull and basically pretty crappy county paper. I was so intrigued, in fact, that no sooner had I finished reading it I…

Dad, Todd, Mal, and me are sitting in the positions I’ve assigned us, and the Mormon Tabernacle Boring is singing the National Anthem really slowly. After forever, we all put our Orioles caps back on as the Pirates take the field, and it’s showtime. My palms are sweating. Mom comes in. “Uh-oh,” I say, not…