By Ed Park
Murray and Phoebe Adipose cast their nine-year-old son as a lead in their Broadway hit “Burton!,” based, yes, on Robert Burton’s “The Anatomy of Melancholy.” He repaid them by creating his own play, “Melancholy Baby,” and without another word to his parents, departing for prep school in New England. When his bickering parents finally set off to find him — and to find inspiration for their next play — they hit a roadblock. Their son is nowhere to be found.

By John Cheever
Julia was beautiful, worldly and the kind of woman who made men feel like emperors when they left her home in the morning. She would choose either Morgan or Sears, and the man she spurned would remember that regret forever.

By Susannah Felts I haven’t been at Piper’s place ten minutes when Hawk bursts in the back door and swoops down to kiss her. He’s skinnier than I pictured, in flip-flops and turquoise swim trunks, and a full red beard that’s like a soft alarm constantly ringing. He brings the barbecue cloud, the tenacious odor [...]

By Beth Helms
As mother and daughter spend a day at the hospital, they’re reminded of all the things we don’t forget — and all the things we keep secret, even from those we are closest to.

By Nick McDonell
They were young and educated and important hands at the American embassy. What could they possibly have to learn about the world?

By Adam Mansbach
Dakar had a nice scam going with the rent at one of the hippest addresses in Brooklyn. It’s when he tried to push it one step too far that things got really interesting.

By Elisa Albert Darren’s rehab counselor told Marcia it would be best to avoid asking him questions: “Everything is new. Follow his lead.” They were letting him out for her 60th birthday, sprung on a chaperoned pass. He showed up at the bustling Italian place near the end of dinner. They had waited forty minutes [...]

By Stephen Graham Jones Later we would learn that the guy kept a machete close to his front door. That he kept it there specifically for people like us. That he’d been waiting. I was fifteen. It was supposed to be a simple thing we were doing. In a way, I guess it was. Just [...]

By Noria Jablonski The weather was cold and wet, and all day the crowds had been thin in the ten-in-one tent. Up on their platform, Fern and Rose sat on a wide threadbare chair, flanked by a pair of saxophones on stands. Fern read a comic book and Rose practiced her knitting. Baby Carlotta, the [...]

By Justin Kramon I. This is Thomas Scripter, twenty-two years old, lying in bed in his apartment.  It is late.  And quiet.  A single bulb hangs outside his window.  Some nights it swings in the wind, and on these nights a glow swells behind his blinds, then fades, again and again, the room brightening and [...]

By Alison Espach I think you should know what our neighbor has been saying since you left: you borrowed a ladle once and never returned it.  You left cigarette butts on the porch.  You talked too loudly on the telephone during your phone interviews, and you drank so much whiskey and watched so much MSNBC [...]