By Julia Glass
When Clem reawakens after a month spent comatose after a terrible sailing accident, nothing is as she remembers. Where’s her boyfriend? And who’s the guy with the flowers?

By Jeff Hobbs
Two brothers. One a lawyer, one a would-be indie-rock star. One faces the day with promise, the other almost runs over his soon-to-be ex-wife. Care to guess which one?

By Jay McInerney
Jonathan and Juan aspired to one of the agented professions. Until then, they had to cope with the indignities New York heaps upon its upwardly striving: writing for alternative weeklies, finding something to do at a low-level publishing job all day, hoping for hot water in apartments they pay way too much for every month.

By Porochista Khakpour
Omar knew today would be a day of firsts for his Iranian family, newly relocated to Los Angeles. He was eager to begin life in America, to have his three kids begin school and his wife start a new job at a local boutique. But when he saw his wife head to work dressed like something from American TV, it turned out the old world still held some sway.

By Ross Raisin
You might think that the natural enemy of the exterminator is the pest they are sent out to control. You would be wrong.

By Ben Shattuck In the mid-summer of 1672 my cousin Pequick, standing by a marsh midden and tearing quahog meat from its shell, was the first to lay the groundwork for nouns. “We take the word,” she said, tossing a purple-lipped shell on the midden, “and lengthen it the more detailed it becomes.”  An egret [...]

By Julie Orringer École Spéciale To get to school he had to cross the Jardin du Luxembourg, past the elaborate Palais, past the fountain and the flowerbeds teeming with late poppies and marigolds.  Children sailed elegant miniature boats in the fountain, and Andras thought with a kind of indignant pride of the scrapwood boats he [...]

By Darin Strauss Maybe you only reach adulthood when your parents turn over the keys to their maturity; when they say, after the lessons and advice, the road tests: “Take it out of the garage, it’s yours now. I can’t drive it anymore.” But once you come back, they frown over the nicks in the [...]