Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show is world-class historical fiction. It takes us to a place, mid-nineteenth-century Japan, that's long ago and far away, and makes it contemporary and intimately familiar. It's a wryly told tale, full of wonders and surprises, written with grace and authority. Richar...
The music teacher was playing a medley of Gershwin tunes on the piano, but the students, though previously quieting to the gentle nature of the music, had discovered that the program was delayed and were soon chatting again. Nigerian and American, Israeli and Indian, they were nevertheless all sp...
Good fortune. Bobby took the night train, hoping to get to Cherry’s town early enough to find her house and knock on her door. But as he neared the town he grew tentative. Would she be glad to see him? Were these things reversible, the midnight visits of mourning friends? Was he in fact mournin...
Ralph parked his van behind another one just like it, but with a different logo on the side. Ralph had been perfectly happy rummaging around inside the mortuary, but now he was morose. The detective had upset him, and I thought that was strange. Inside the restaurant there were empty tables every...
In “The Headhunter,” two men develop an unlikely friendship when recruiter Len Siegel places Howard Rifkin in his ideal job. Len and Howard buy houses on the same street, but after twenty years their friendship comes to an abrupt and surprising end. In the title story, Noa Nechemia and her father...
