By Michael Byers
A kangaroo, a murder plot, a threesome and a lion.

By Adam Davies
Dear Doris Boos,
I never reply to these things. That’s been my steadfast policy ever since butcher knives started showing up in the mail after “Die For Your Dinner.” All my fans know this. So when I saw the envelope with my address on it — my personal home address — I thought, Uh-oh, [...]

By Marisa Matarazzo
Our liaison.  One summer long.  It ends when I break the building.  I meant it to impress her.  And cool her, in the heat. Grievously I’ll never know if it does.  Because she disappears, washes away, gone. Vapor.
Meeting: She’s with a traveling group of acrobats and trapeze flyers and flexibles that bend their [...]

By Stewart O’Nan
It was just another summer day. A month remained before college. There was work at the Conoco, sleeping in, swimming with her friends, driving lessons with her little sister, lunch at the DQ. But then what happened?

By Cecil Castellucci
Lana got the job the way anyone else would: She answered an ad.  At the interview she didn’t realize that Lucius Drake was anything other than a smart, charming businessman.  His suit was impeccable.  His hair coiffed and oiled. His office neat and tidy.  His teeth white. Later, she would understand that these [...]

By Michelle Wildgen
Hal had a hard time saying no. It got him in trouble at work — he was supposed to deliver meals to the elderly, not sit with them all afternoon and do their yardwork, to boot. It contributed to his strange home life. And one afternoon, it all came together.

By Ted Heller
New York was still New York, Times Square was still Times Square, and teenagers who had no real need to sell drugs could still have a whole lot of adventures if they tried.

By Thisbe Nissen
The best man. The bride’s sister. But at this Midwestern wedding, nothing else that you might imagine happens.

By Jennine Capó Crucet
Rebeca led her brother to the canal she’d found two months earlier, a place that before that day she’d resolved never to tell him about. He’d called dibs on the bike they’d stolen from their cousins, so she was on foot. He rode next to her, standing on the pedals and circling [...]

By Andrew Foster Altschul
Chick’s mom didn’t understand why she hung around with these boys, why she drove them around town, why she let them call her Chick. But for Chick, the whiff of danger, the thrill of maybe getting out of town, the stirrings of love — it was all impossible to resist