In the distance, over the cusp of the planets, a primordial paused, its mammoth body shimmering itself into perception. As I watched it, a dreadful certainty gripped me: this was how Gramps was trappe...
If the Governor speaks of ideals, they are selfless ideals; if he speaks of paths to be taken, they are untrod paths. The Governor is one who leaves no cliché unturned,
There are angels in Hell, the horror writer told him, not just in Heaven. Indeed, the angels of Hell may be the more numerous.
I was taught that the villagers and the slum dwellers were like animals, she said. It was the responsibility of people of the educated classes to see to it rules were followed and order maintained. An...
He had worked to save those men, though it had been hopeless work. Mankind had acquired an appetite for dying; doctors had become shepherds to the process.
Any idea what started it? No obvious point of origin, but Perry Horne will be out later and he can tell us more. Joe unzipped his jacket a little way and palmed sweat from his throat. I don’t need a f...
WHEN WALLY BENNETT was a kid, his parents taught him to say this prayer: Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. He...
The wood smoke gave the whole place the scent of autumn,
The beer got him, and, for a moment, a rush of idiot compassion urged him to hug a pinch-faced man in brown overalls who sat on a stool surrounded by primitive paintings of Jesus engaged in various fa...
She and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, live in Northamp ton, Massachusetts, which is only a short drive away from the Eric Carle Museum.
Rudge was not a pessimist, but he’d lived long enough to know that hope had to be kept on a short leash.
Poor is a word they never said, or common. But the wife has worked so hard to make her vowels shallower and to lift her r's and to bring back her h's that she hardly speaks anymore; every time she ope...
Love that can’t trump intellectual integrity isn’t worth the name.
Kelly Link is the author of three collections: Magic for Beginners, Stranger Things Happen, and Pretty Monsters. Her short stories have appeared in A Wolf at the Door and Other Retold Fairy Tales; Noi...
I should know better than to try and measure the breadth and depth of love by its noise and dramas but there are times that I crave it, as if it’s proof that love is alive.
Every day someone out there comes to the end of his tether, decides he can't carry on any more, and starts looking for a really good method to end it all. How do you do it? Let me count the ways.
Deduction was for the highbrows in top hats and great coats; I performed my detecting with a boot and a six-gun.
Before. Yes, before, I sailed my little boat on a placid sea of ignorance. Was I blissful? Oh my, yes. Before the truth floated like jetsam towards me, fouling my rudder . . .
—Chickens have a twenty-minute memory. We primates cope through booze and denial. Dial up more of that denial part, you’ll last longer.
So mean that her death would cause a thousand of Hell's toughest demons to opt for early retirement.