I. THE PERVERTED MESSAGE The sky was roseate at the end of the day, in the east rather than in the west — all wrong — when I encountered a mother and…

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By Alejandro Zambra, from Multiple Choice, which was published this month by Penguin Books. Zambra’s most recent collection of stories is My Documents. Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell.

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On my way home today I saw someone in the field, someone I once knew. I was coming down the road from a hill and saw him from a distance.…

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By Adam Ehrlich Sachs, from his debut collection of short stories, Inherited Disorders, which was published last month by Regan Arts.

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By Amie Barrodale, from “Night Report.” The story appears in You Are Having a Good Time, a collection of Barrodale’s fiction that will be published next month by Farrar, Straus…

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The finalists were him and some other people, but really there was just him. Him filming his boy, who was riding a bike for the first time. A red-and-blue Spider-Man…

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By Thomas Bernhard, from the short story “Montaigne,” which appears in Goethe Dies, a collection that was published last month by Seagull Books. Bernhard was the author of numerous novels…

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The old woman’s husband, even older than she, has lived long enough. She is careful not to say this to her daughters, to her brother, to the doctors. He’s had…

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By Dorthe Nors, from an unpublished collection of short stories. Nors is the author of four novels and one previous story collection. A volume of her novellas, So Much for…

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