People are ticked off these days, observe Culpepper and Lee, with “enormous wellsprings of pent-up democratic pressure just looking for a way to get out.” As their narrative opens, they examine a predecessor event that uncorked similar pressure: namely, the reaction against the meat industry when, in 1906, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, documented the […]
Aya awakens, steps out of her hut, and sits by the campfire with her grandparents for breakfast. It’s a special day. Today, Grandpa will take Aya into the forest to see a bear—a first for her. They mount their horses and make their way through the woods, keenly aware of indicators of the shifting seasons, […]
Raised by her father in Silverpine, Oregon, after her mother moved halfway across the world, Dani’s separation anxiety ran deep long before Parker ghosted her, so when she runs headfirst into him at a bar in New York City, she promptly runs out rather than reopen a door for the former best friend who’d loved […]
In “Room,” an unnamed narrator finds herself locked inside a white room in Vienna, where she has come to finish a book, and becomes increasingly agitated. “Night,” the longest section by far, brings us another unnamed narrator in a room. This woman—a German writer—suffers from insomnia and spends her hours sifting through her own memories, […]
Michael Harrier is no stranger to violence: At just 8 years old, he witnessed his white supremacist father murder his mother, an incident that sparked a lifetime of guilt and self-harm. After honing his own violent tendencies hunting poachers on the plains of Africa as a teenager, the adult Michael resides in California and makes […]
Genevieve (Genna) Summerford, a young psychotherapist from a socially prominent family, and her beau, Simon Shaw, a captain in the Tammany political machine and the proprietor of a fledgling horse farm in upstate New York, are at an auction in the City, where Simon’s first yearling is up for bid. While they’re celebrating Fair Corner […]
Eva, an 18-year-old intern at London-based Low Slang Records, wants to break into the A&R side of the music industry but spends her days fetching coffee for higher-ups who won’t give her the time of day. Then she finds 16-year-old Alora Storm-Jones. When Eva comes across a video of Alora singing, she’s transfixed by her […]
In Fourspires, familiars exist to serve their arcanists, wresting power from bone, botanicals, blood, and stone until overexertion kills them. Taro, a bone familiar with an “unhealthy obsession with black eye liner” and an “attitude problem,” dreams of running away with Nixie, the love of her life. Nixie, familiar to the head botanic arcanist, despises […]
BeBe enjoys her comfortable life as a caterpillar, munching leaves and crawling wherever she pleases. But after waking up with wings and long legs, her world suddenly feels “strange.” She can no longer “crunch on her favorite milkweed or clover” and feels uncomfortable when “her big wings [follow] her everywhere.” The story uses BeBe’s transformation […]
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 […]