Luke Wells is trying to locate his missing Uncle Deke when he makes two shocking discoveries at Deke’s remote mountain cabin. First, his psychic talents tell him that the cabin was the site of violent crime, and second that Deke has been living there with Bea Harper. The Wells and Harper families have been enemies […]
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret […]
Frank Uwe Laysiepen (1943-2020), better known by the sobriquet Ulay, was a German-born photographer and artist who in 1976 perpetrated one of the most audacious and celebrated art thefts in modern history, albeit as an act of performance art. In this rather uneven account, a triptych of that event, principal author Charney attempts to place […]
Margo and Matilda, the Halifax twins, have been turning heads and causing whispers since the day they debuted. There’s not a man in London who wouldn’t recognize their red hair, and Margo has enjoyed the company of several, but the twins are too notorious for anyone to court them conventionally. Margo starts to think they […]
Playwright Okuni ranges through Shakespeare’s oeuvre for lesser-known snippets of dialogue, which he reshapes into sonnet-like stanzas of 11 or 12 lines. The poems play very loosely on classic Shakespearean themes, prominent among them being the travails and traps of (especially royal) power. “My Crown” features lines from Henry VI, in which a furious Queen […]
Tennis isn’t the only thing weighing on Leo: He’s gay and not out to anyone. He doesn’t always agree with his father, legendary tennis player Johnny Chambers, who retired to coach Leo after a multiple sclerosis diagnosis cut his own career short. After Johnny suffers a stroke that keeps him from traveling as much as […]
Xavier Coates lives and handles maintenance at Leigh Pierce Estates, a low-rise apartment building. While the rent is affordable, its tenants are saddled with a neglectful property manager who’s waiting to tear the place down—he certainly doesn’t care that some tenants have been disappearing lately. Xavier, however, has compassion for others, including an ailing girl […]
Fourteen-year-old Mikayla Grebe is days away from taking the Fulfilled Genetic Potential test and proving she’s worth society’s investment. The fear of losing Elite status and becoming a Defective or an Expendable always looms. She knows that “you can lose everything in a moment”—like her friend Carmen, who vanished with her family one day. But […]
This debut compilation of 15 tales, often driven by unlikely premises, works hard to upend readers’ assumptions. “My Son, David,” for example, centers on a young boy’s unsettling plea to leave his bedroom window open—and allow access to monsters that only he can see: “They need to come back or they can’t go home.” Many […]
Professors Amelia Tarrant and Caleb Sterling have been soulmates since they met as children at boarding school—he an orphan, she the neglected child of indifferent academics. They grew up together and became historians together. But double standards plague even the zany magical universe they inhabit and a stray moment of platonic touching sets tongues wagging. […]