After the event, it was observed that there can be no neutral bystanders. If employment of the passive voice has also been observed in the preceding sentence—as in, if some…

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The saleswoman was waiting for them as they entered the store. She had severely dyed hair and a clipboard clutched tightly to her chest. Josh thought it was possibly her…

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Too early for spring, you couldn’t trust such blinding-white sunshine in mid-March. And the smell of damp earth thawing, reviving—too soon. Abigail was feeling light-headed. Unreal. A seismic sensation, as…

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I am a member of the Very Beneficial Changeling Society. Perhaps you have heard of us? We love our name, the Very Beneficial Changeling Society, because it indicates in some…

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Perhaps she should have known that she would find her lost love—her Viking husband, gone these many years—in Sydesgaard, on the island of Funen, in the village of his people.…

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The Dogman snuck back from the bar with two Kölsches and stuck one in front of me. An old gesture. Old for us, old for history. “I quit drinking,” I…

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The exhibit had been up for three weeks when the trouble started. As soon as Cliff arrived at the gallery that afternoon, Georgina got up from the stool where they…

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Getting past the mastodon took planning. The great plated skull was wedged between the fireplace and the credenza, leaving the two ivory tusks splayed across the carpet where a coffee…

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The first time she flies home for the holidays, Iris makes two friends. She is seated between a married couple, because the woman prefers the window and the man prefers…

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The old window gave a grand view of Yellow Tree, trunk to branch. They called it Yellow Tree even though the ginkgo was yellow for only about a week each…

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The child is scared. Shrieking. She cannot get down. The child is four, in a whorl of terror. The mother is livid. Screaming. She thinks the child is weak, girly,…

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Miranda was tall and as dark-haired as they come. I say was and not is and that is inaccurate because she is still around and I really am not. She…

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Harold Jamieson, once chief engineer of New York City’s sanitation department, enjoyed retirement. He knew from his small circle of friends that some didn’t, so he considered himself lucky. He…

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It is 1924. Günter Zeitz is thirty-three years old. His hair is black, unruly. And, in the manner of certain very tall men, he habitually hunches his shoulders and lets…

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As promised in the email she’d received, the shuttle was waiting at the curb outside baggage claim. It was just a minivan, it turned out, not the wheeled and finned…

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That night at the window, looking out at the street full of snow, big flakes falling through the streetlight, I listened to what Anna was saying. She was speaking of…

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I was in Midtown, sitting by a dry fountain, making a list of all the men I’d slept with since my last checkup—doctor’s orders. Afterward, I would head downtown and…

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I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t get up—­just couldn’t get up, couldn’t get up or leave. All day lying in that median, unable. Was this misery or joy? It’s happened to…

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A Toyota HiAce with piebald paneling, singing suspension, and a reg from the last millennium rolled into the parking lot of the Swinford Gaels football club late on a Friday…

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On a November Saturday in 1990, Pam went over to Joe’s place to listen to records. It was raining in sheets that whipped around the corners of buildings and blowing…

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The Gersons were a fairly unexceptional family. The maid had idly observed them upon their arrival at the Hotel Neversink as she vacuumed the length of the third-floor hallway. The…

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“Thank you for the honor. I am very—honored.” You have been instructed to remove the clumsy black mortarboard at this point in the commencement ceremony. Now you incline your head…

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All his life he lived on hatred. He was a solitary man who hoarded gloom. At night a thick smell filled his bachelor’s room on the edge of the kibbutz.…

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They were released. For the first time in seven years, they stood outside in the courtyard of the reeducation center. They looked across at the gate. They remembered none of…

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Bianca White, dressed in cream, was the first to arrive. All morning, she’d been looking forward to her lunch date with Ainsley Burton. In addition to being Bianca’s estranged best…

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Years ago, Ellie asked me to write the story of our friend Addie and the chili. The incident involved some bowls of chili, and more than one woman crying, in…

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I had finished lunch when I decided to attend the memorial service later that afternoon for Juno Wasserman, who had died the week before, just shy of seventy. Juno had been…

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Her bathroom was a wreck. This tiny, ruinous space. The contractor had tiled the walls askew and had to start over. He’d set the tub askew and had to start…

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