Even this far inland, New Jersey was still recovering from Hurricane Sandy, which in its time, a few years back, had been called the storm of the century. How foolish it seemed now to label anything o...
Even the bells from the churches have a conversation, all ringing at once.
Eros, eyesore.
Engineered genes don’t play by the rules that have organized life for three billion years (or, if you prefer, 4,004). And in this case, winning means loser takes all.
Emelina set a cup of tea in front of me. I picked it up and let the steam touch my eyelids, realizing that what I needed most at that moment was to lie in bed with someone who was fond of every inch o...
Don't dare presume there's shame in the lot of a woman who carries on.
Dellarobia noted they were not a perfect physical match: Nelda plump and rosy-cheeked, her mother fine-boned. The resemblance blazed in their wide brown eyes and the way they nodded, the gnomy caps bo...
Cooking is 80 percent confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice.
Conquest and liberation and democracy and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line and it looks like rain.
Come on, people. Doesn't anybody remember how to take a big old knife, whack open a pumpkin, scrape out the seeds, and bake it? We can carve a face onto it, but can't draw and quarter it? Are we not a...
Certain ramshackle aspects of Dellarobia had also gone undercover, it seemed, just like the snow-covered barns. Some defects lurked, but for now her way seemed clear. She’d made plans.
By pure mistake, his implementation is sometimes more pure than his intentions. But mostly it is the other way around. Mostly he shouts, Praise be! while the back of his hand knocks you flat.
But other people fast or walk long pilgrimages to honor the spirit of what they believe makes our world whole and lovely. If we gardeners can, in the same spirit, put our heels to the shovel, kneel be...
But mother wanted to consume me like food. I needed my won room. I needed books, and for the first time in my life I needed schoolmasters who would tell me each day what to think about.
But approaching mealtimes as a creative opportunity, rather than a chore, is an option.
But a spontaneous traveler inevitably will end up with the tummy gauge suddenly on empty, in some place where cuisine is not really the point: a museum cafeteria, or late-night snack bar across from t...
But a Congolese life is like the useless Congolese bill, which you can pile by the fistful or the bucketful into a merchant's hand, and still not purchase a single banana. It's dawning on me that I li...
But Mama has this certain voice sometimes. Not exactly sassing back, but just about nearly.
Bobby Bingo had skin like a baked potato. A complete vegetable man, Lou Ann thought,
Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or at least paused to strike a glancing blow with his sky-blue mouth as he passed.