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 [...]

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 [...]

By Marie Myung-Ok Lee And so here was Dr. Yungman Kwok, graduate of the prestigious Seoul National University Medical College, in the SANUS Medical Group office in the Mall of America, preparing to do his first set of laser pubic hair removal. LESS PAINFUL THAN WAXING PERMANENT RESULTS** PERFORMED BY MEDICAL DOCTOR FOR THE HIGHEST [...]

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 [...]

By Danielle Lazarin On Friday night, babysitting night, Claire waited at the end of the driveway, her breath appearing in the air before her. She pulled her wool hat over her damp hair and crossed her arms and watched for the gunmetal gray of Noah Hunt’s sports car to appear from around the corner of [...]

By Rebecca Makkai Our fifth week in the apartment, the day before I started my job at Alejandro’s, Emily threw out all the peanut butter and planted the bathroom scale in front of the refrigerator. Later, she saw me standing on the scale with the fridge door open, waiting for the red numbers. “No,” she [...]

By Mary Beth Keane Henry was going to Ireland to present a paper at the International Ocean Research Conference. Nicole was going because Henry invited her to come along. At seven months old, William, their son, was big enough to be left with his Mamó, and Rosemary, Henry’s mother, said it was good for young [...]

By Sarah Gardner Borden Lidia watched cartoons from the living room sofa, the hand-me-down camelback where Heather and Eric spent Thursday nights in front of their own favorite shows. Lidia: a shy child with light gold hair and brown eyes, one of those little girls with pierced ears already, a tiny stud in each delicate [...]

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 Ian Stansel The corn turned to trees and we entered the Shawnee National Forest, the shadows cooling us, the air now moist and carrying with it the clean smell of dark plantlife. We’d made it just in time. It would be the height of the day soon and through the morning and early afternoon [...]

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 Jessica Francis Kane Six weeks after his college roommate died, Ben thought he saw him in London: the square jaw and pale skin, the round eyes and devilish grin. But it was only a stranger in the crowd on Oxford Street. In the weeks that followed, Ben saw lots of people who reminded him [...]

By Adin Bookbinder Suddenly she was happy. Abby noticed the change the way you realized, lying in bed on a winter morning, that an unexpected blizzard had fallen overnight. The world was different. She raised the blinds on a clear June day. She couldn’t sit still. She wanted to sing. She’d been depressed for five [...]

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 [...]

By Sarah Braunstein A Peeping Tom named Tom. He was Thomas Grant, thirty-nine years old, plain, clean-shaven, a face people tended to ignore or trust unthinkingly. He carried himself like a can collector in a windstorm, luckless and determined. He was a nurse, a “male nurse” as they say (this drove him crazy), at an [...]

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