On the river, Bianca Marburg leaned toward the water and closed her hand around a yellow bowl that was floating, calmly upright, past her kayak. The bowl was dry inside, empty but for a beetle 

Imogene pressed her face against the window, making a lozenge of cold wetness on her left cheek. It was raining. Great gray streamers hung from the sky, in mourning for an angel. Today was the day

The car Mary drove was a borrowed 1954 three-and-a-half-liter Alma Mercury. Spidery cracks in the leather upholstery snagged against her silk blouse as she shifted her weight to heave the wheel

His story, as the story of every one of us, started long before we were born. For dynasties, our town provided the imperial families their most reliable servants. Eunuchs they are called, though out of 

She had a needlepoint pillow that read: MAKING LOVE IN 2002. On the other side of the couch there was MAKING LOVE IN 1997, on blue, with a ruffle around the edge. I guessed there were more

Hollis was in the back at a table piled with books and a space among them where he was writing when Carol came in. Hello, she said. Well, look who's here, he said coolly. Hello. She was wearing 

Sunday and the beautiful and sleek and unsmiling and too good for us Mavala Shikongo is gone. Second to last single woman teacher at an all boy's boarding school so far in the veld even the baboons 

The Scottish Brewer and his wife have not joined us this afternoon for our trek through the forest of Tapantí. They are protesting the mud. Boycotting the birds. Outraged by the sloppiness, the untidiness

A boy with a parrot on his shoulder was walking along the railway tracks. His gait was dreamy and he swung a daisy as he went. With each step the boy dragged his toes in the rail bed, as if measuring out 

On 5.8.42, Lieutenant General Paulus, now in command of Sixth Army, approached Stalingrad in obedience to the directives of Operation Blue, or Blau as I should say, for blue is merely any