Hello! What can I help you with today? That’s a great question! In J. D. Salinger’s coming of age novel The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield’s red hunting hat symbolizes his alienation from the world. He often wears the… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

“Don’t worry. This won’t hurt,” he says and grins at the old lady’s stony face. Sonny makes the Y-shaped incision from shoulder to shoulder and down to the pubic bone. Smooth as slicing warm butter. The layers of fat and… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

I looked at the green glow of the clock. It was two-thirty in the morning. Someone was thumping on the back door. My husband was away on a week-long trucking haul. So it was just me and my two daughters… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

There is no reality beyond the one which lies in that momentary form which we succeed in conferring upon ourselves, upon others, upon things -Luigi Pirandello As the remnants of your dream slip away, you wake up thinking about oranges—specifically… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

It started on the third Tuesday after the funeral. I was slicing apples for my school lunch, and the dog, Ravi, sat by the door, watching. He always watched me, but that day, he did it differently. Not like a… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

You are ten years old and a fly zips around you and you scream that it’s a bee. You cover your head and scream and scream until your mother swats the fly against the wall and it falls, dead. She… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

Jim was thick as old-growth timber, and Camerin danced around something while he hung his work shirt in the mudroom. I had no faith he’d catch what she was trying to say. None. Jim had to meet the crummy at… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

A long time ago there was a small town in a picturesque valley where they kept finding more and more coal. It started growing in the mid 1800s and people from all around the region moved there to work in… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

I decided what to do with the doll. I’d leave it on a train. Any train would do. I picked the last one that night; the one heading to Greensborough. It would be almost empty. I’d put the doll on… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.