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Moscow, Idaho
Chris Offutt
‘Tilden stopped digging and wiped his sleeve across his forehead, leaving a brown smear on his skin.’
A Fan Letter
Stewart O’Nan
‘Before I begin I'd like to say that I'll try to remember everything as best I can, though sometimes I know it won't be right.’
The Driving Child
Mona Simpson
‘Staring out at the endless gray, Mary wrote a letter to her mother and told her she'd named the baby Jane, the name she'd years ago given her only doll.’
Xmas, Jamaica Plain
Melanie Rae Thon
‘I’m the one who got away, the one you don’t know; I’m the long hairs you find under your pillow, nested in your drain, tangled in your brush.’
Future Shock
Kate Wheeler
‘Althea's neck strained. Her black, small eyes shifted swiftly, blinked, then fixed evilly on Ingrid.’
Taken Out of Context
Paul Beatty
‘I’d never been in a room full of black people unrelated to me before.’
The Lawyer’s Story
Paul Theroux
‘Bow tie, blue shirt, tight suit, cowboy boots—he was overdressed for Singapore.’
The Butcher of Bermondsey
Graham Swift
‘Then he led me out into the noise and the glare and the stink.’
Frozen Fish
William Leith
‘I remembered the freezer from when we were kids. It had been important to us then, the site of many shameful boyish deeds.’
Toffee
Agnes Owens
‘"Bloody well wake up!" Maureen's mother called to her -daughter, who slept in the kitchen bed recess.’