By David Searcy, from Shame and Wonder, a collection of essays that was published this month by Random House. Searcy is the author of two novels, including Last Things (2002).

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They got into our car at a stoplight. It was cold. We never lock the doors in back. There were two of them. At the apartment they terrorized us. It…

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Harriet says she will take Gayle to A.A. meetings. Lois offers to pay her extra for gas and time, but Harriet says no, being of service is essential to her…

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From War, So Much War, by Mercè Rodoreda, published this month by Open Letter. Rodoreda, who died in 1983, was the author of several other novels, including The Time of…

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To be absolutely certain I rode the F train from my relatively quiet Lower East Side neighborhood to 34th Street and set myself adrift in the crowds around Penn Station…

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By Jean-Paul Clébert (1926–2011), from a story written in 1952 and published in the Winter 2015 issue of The Literary Review. Translated from the French by Edward Gauvin. New York…

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By Elizabeth Harrower, from the story collection A Few Days in the Country, out this month from Text Publishing. Harrower lives in Sydney, Australia. She is the author of five…

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Because Valeria is always late, because I’d like to have dinner with her at seven, and because, if I ask her to meet me at the restaurant at seven, I…

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Spindling, white Fjóla Neergaard, in dun wool slacks, her marble face perched on a whorl of scarves, drove her father’s Mercedes through a trash-blown lane of reupholsterers and auto-body shops…

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