It’s Jasper. Says he wants a Montreal story for a new anthology he’s preparing, something about cities. Go crazy, he says. Big money, he says. Hard/soft deal with Knopf/Vintage. HBO planning mini-series based on his concept, adapting stories from his book for TV. Put in al...
Billy was eight years old. He was sitting at his desk in class. The teacher was talking. Billy was looking very attentive. In truth, he didn’t hear a word of what the teacher was saying. Monsters! His head was filled with visions of monsters. He saw...
Occasionally, she spots someone walking down the street who for some reason or other—a piece of clothing, a hairstyle, a frown—sparks an unpleasant memory. These are not unwelcome incidents. They remind her that the man and the woman are nothing but a memory to her, that she has succeeded in step...
His grandparents lived next to a little beach. He spent that whole summer there, loving every moment of it. They built fires, waded in the ocean, hunted for seashells. For many years, even into adulthood, whenever he held the star-stone and closed his eyes, he would smell the ocean the way it had...
with its famous refrain: “Ah, but I was so much older then / I’m younger than that now.” The stories that comprise this novella—all con-nected, distally or centrally, to a mystical, mythical (mythical?) used-book store called Lost Pages—embody that oxymoronic, Zen nugget of self-observation by Dy...
Aydee, wrapped in layers of tattered and dirty clothes, wearing a tuque thattries hard to hide her face, fidgets nervously while she recounts the latest adventures of her “other self.” Sandra begins to regret bringing her inside. It’s only midmorning; The Small Easy isn’t ...
The second most common suborder consists of mygalomorphs — hairy, often large species, such as tarantulas. Mesothelae, the oldest suborder of spiders still extant, are quite rare; of the estimated hundred thousand or so species of spiders, fewer than one hundred belong to this primitive family, a...
Kyle had been attracted to Lauren since the first time he’d seen her, when she walked into Pen & Paper and asked to see the manager. She was there for a job interview. He remembered struggling not to let his mouth gape open. He remembered actually being able to direct her to Mr. Howard withou...