Inside the navy-blue Victorian house two blocks off Main Street, four women sat around a sturdy kitchen table. As you watched them chatting and sipping sweet tea, you might assume you were observing a church committee or a quilting circle. Read More …
“Papà.” I looked into my father’s eyes, deep blue and set off by leathery skin and rows of wrinkles—the result of age, but also a lifetime of long hours in fishing boats out in the sun. “Oh, Papà,” I said Read More …
Leine checked her watch as she waited for the target to emerge from the concrete block building. Practical as only Soviet-style architecture could be, nevertheless the crumbling façade gave the impression of faded power, like a once-famous tenor now down Read More …
The faint breeze from the open window carried the sound of the Burgermeister’s rich baritone singing the arpeggios Haydn had assigned him: “Do Mi So Mi Do.” In the distance, he could hear the soft, melodious strains of the barber-surgeon’s violin. Read More …
Honoria took the cloche off and shrugged off the coat with the white fox collar, laying them on one of the small tables flanking the door. She sniffed. Thanks to the croup, her sense of smell was still off. Yet Read More …
Given the stuff on TV at the time, and especially conditioned by the dreck on which I’d been working for the past few years, I really didn’t expect much. But, alone in that room, within a few minutes I was Read More …
To begin, let me clear up a few things. J. Dyanne does not communicate with little moon aliens or Martians. She does not have a crystal ball, nor was she responsible for the outcome of the last presidential election. And Read More …
Alone, Pontchartrain inspected the black case. It was secured with not one but two sets of wax seals imprinted with La Reynie’s official insignia. Pontchartrain cracked open the brittle seals with a small knife and inserted the key into the Read More …
My husband wasn’t in bed with me when I woke up that January morning. The mid-winter sky was bruised purple and yellow outside the window. I shut bleary eyes against light that glared and pounded. A second later I realized Read More …
For ten years, my father’s furniture and books lurked in the study he abandoned. I don’t remember a time when we thought he might come back, but his belongings were like a bookmark, holding a place in our lives… — Read More …