HAL PARKER WAS RESOLUTELY closing in on his prey, and he felt his blood pressure amp up with every firm step he placed into the dirt. He could tell he was nearing his target by the frequency and volume of blood that had fallen onto the darkened ground, like dulled rubies scattered in the rich […]
I amble through the storeroom of my candy store, basking in the afterglow of another successful day. I don’t really need to stick around so long after closing for the night, but for some reason, I just can’t bring myself to leave. I trail my fingertips over the shelves. The names on the boxes speak […]
Gordon Maines looked at himself in the hotel bathroom mirror and couldn’t help admire what he saw staring back at him. For a third-term city councilman considering a run for mayor, he exuded the confidence of a man who regularly bent the system to his will rather than the other way around. Beyond that, he […]
It was a chilly predawn morning when Anthony Strauss eased Sweet Caroline, his seventeen-foot Boston Whaler, from the trailer into water so dark it was indistinguishable from the sky. To the east, the rising sun raced along the riverbank, igniting the shoreline of Lake Winnipesaukee in a buttery glow. Anthony cast his lure about twenty […]
History is a fluid enterprise. Stories of events change depending on the viewpoint. It is often the victor who gets to tell the tale and cement myth into fact. Take the twin epics of Homer—the Iliad and the Odyssey—two lyric poems that recount the Trojan War and its aftermath. These stories were believed to have […]
The cold crept inside the body’s outermost parts first. It turned aqueous cells into something solid, worked its way in millimeter by millimeter. The pert nose. The eyelashes, still coated in thick mascara. The earlobes, studded with delicate silver rings. The fingertips were quick to crystallize, dusty whiteness spreading over the knuckles until the nails, […]
They died during a freak April snowstorm, blood pooling on a patchy bed of white. Afterward, some people said the killer must have kept an eye on the gathering gray clouds. Taken the weather as a cue to strike and picked the moment when everyone else was huddled indoors, shivering in their optimistic shirtsleeves and […]
Rowan DuPont parked on the southeast side of the downtown square. The county courthouse sat smack in the middle of Winchester with streets forming a grid around it. Shops, including a vintage movie theater, revitalized over the past few years by local artisans lined the sidewalks. Something Rowan loved most about her hometown were the […]
SUSAN SNYDER PRESSES her foot down on the gas pedal and zooms around a curve, the headlights of her Mustang convertible cutting through the darkness and the stereo blasting the Foo Fighters into the cool June Texas air. She has the top down, and her hair whips around in the wind as goose bumps rise […]
Have you heard?” Grace plopped her books on the table beside me. “Bryce Scout is moving back to town. The local celebrity jock is about to ‘reclaim his crown.’” I rolled my eyes. “You’re just jealous because Corrigan won’t be around to flirt with you as much.” Grace paled. “I am not…” she sputtered, her […]
He’s in my office again, bothering me. It bothers me just to look at him, but it particularly bothers me when he speaks, and Rob speaks a lot, plumped up on mediocre male confidence and throbbing, virile ego. He’s the partners’ favorite, so until I take care of him, I have to play it as […]
She slammed the car door and strode across the gravel drive, wincing as the security light momentarily blinded her. She was vaguely aware of an impending headache, not helped by the fact that someone nearby was playing inhumanly loud music. She should go and tell them to turn it down. Maybe later, because, right now, […]
There’s been a long-running debate in Geekdom as to the geekiest president of the United States. Is it Abraham Lincoln, known for his tall, gangly appearance and awkward social skills, yet possessing a brilliant mind and the ability to sway people to his point of view? Or perhaps John Quincy Adams, whose legal theories and […]
Audrey Coil and Blake Winston had been sexting each other for weeks. Winston’s penis, of which Coil had seen perhaps seven or eight iPhone views in a variety of penile moods, was not clearly different than the penises of a dozen other classmates that Coil had seen, circulated through the smartphones operated by girls in […]
Even before the baby arrived, people were calling Kate Wise the Miracle Mother. Upon learning that she was going to be giving birth at the age of fifty-seven, Kate had told no one other than Allen and Melissa. She hadn’t even told anyone at work. Not DeMarco, not Duran…no one. But somehow, word had gotten […]
Before the incidents started, Alex’s father used to take him out into the woods on adventures. That’s what he called them, but Alex soon discovered that his father’s idea of adventure was sitting on a log or laying in the brush all day, staring through a pair of binoculars at birds. Still, his father, Frances, […]
Three years after the accident, Megan Bookman’s heart and mind were in a good place, although occasionally anxiety afflicted her, a feeling that time was running out, that a sinkhole might at any moment open under her. This wasn’t intuition at work, but just the consequence of being widowed at thirty. A love that she’d […]
They checked the stormwater drains for Henry first. Then the swollen banks of Shallow Reservoir. The previous night’s thunderstorm had been the biggest and wildest the area had seen for years. It dumped two months’ worth of rain and hail in half an hour, stripped trees of limbs and turned street gutters into rapids. Sheets […]
Angie Turner tucked the smiling teddy bear into her backpack as she walked around the carnival with her boyfriend, Ian McNeal. Idaho’s largest fair had just started that morning, and they were enjoying the fun. The sun had just dipped behind the mountains, and the heat of the summer Friday had started to ease. August […]
Carrie Cross smiled back at me, her alabaster skin even more radiant in the late afternoon sunlight than it was on daytime television. While both she and her alter ego, Stormy Winters, the character she played on the soap opera Carefree Hearts, were California natives, that was where the similarities between the two ended. Unlike […]
