Finley has big dreams of becoming a podcast host. Her football player boyfriend, Jensen, has been supportive and has helped her prep for the auditions for the school’s podcast, which is hosted only by seniors. Finley is hoping to garner a co-host gig—a coveted spot that opens the door to an internship at the community […]
Sometimes it takes the eye of an outsider to capture what is unique about a place. Pronko, an American literature professor at Meiji Gakuin University, has lived in Tokyo for decades and has written extensively about its many faces. “Words pointing at Tokyo are not Tokyo, granted,” writes Pronko in his preface. “But words can…reveal […]
In her quest to become self-sustaining, independent of father or husband, Rosalind has met with a great deal of success. She earns enough helping other women solve their domestic problems to own her own home, complete with cook and footman. She no longer relies on the generosity of her clients; her man of business now […]
O’Connor’s is the only story actually set on the Emerald Isle. “Irish Soda Bread Murder” takes place during Galway City’s annual psychic fair. None of the five participants predict that Ronan Stone, the city’s most in-demand psychic, will be felled before the event even starts by a bite of peanut butter hidden in a tin […]
Sacco uses words and illustrations to document stories: He’s a self-described comics journalist. He has combined both forms to great effect in numerous works of graphic nonfiction, including Palestine and Safe Area Goražde, that tell of overseas conflicts. One monumental wordless work, The Great War, depicts the first day of the 1916 Battle of the […]
After a short prologue that finds Nathan Liddle helpless “as a bug on its back” and expecting to be killed at any moment by his beautiful wife, Eve Thayer, a psychiatrist, the story flashes back three weeks to the couple’s strained marriage. While their new baby, Rosewyn, is the proverbial bundle of joy, her needs […]
Bold and ambitious, Miss Harriet Morrow has wrangled herself a position as the first female field operative for the Prescott Detective Agency, quite an experiment for agency principal Theodore Prescott. Maybe it’s her ankles, which Prescott deemed “thick and sturdy” in her interview, but Harriet just isn’t built like other women in the late 1890s, […]
All Viscount Langdon wants is a bit of quiet to recover from his terrible railway accident, and his private island seems like just the place. But his solitude is disrupted one dark and stormy night when a beautiful aeronaut washes ashore after her hot air balloon collapses, and when he saves her from the ocean, […]
It’s not indifference that drives Robbins to counsel letting go of things beyond one’s control, but instead acknowledgment that, as Buddhists say, “suffering comes from resisting reality.” The reality of the world is that everyone wants to rule it: We crave control, but that control is illusory, and people will for the most part do […]
Salem, Massachusetts, is home to Charlene Morris’ haunted bed-and-breakfast. Dr. Jack Strathmore, the ghost in residence at the house he used to own, loves and watches over Charlene. Dane Stallone, a photographer originally from Salem, and 12 international models of both sexes are staying at the B&B while they shoot a Cupid-themed calendar Dane hopes […]