Dashiell Hammett Corkscrew   Black Mask, September 1925   I   Boiling like a coffee pot before we were five miles out of Filmer, the...

John Wyndham Meteor   The house shook. A picture fell off a shelf, and its glass front smashed as it hit the floor. There was a very loud...

Barbara Kingslover Homeland   I   MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER belonged to the Bird Clan. Hers was one of the fugitive bands of Cherokee who...

Louis de Bernières Labels   I was brought up in the days when there was electric light but no television, and consequently people had to...

Carol Emshwiller Built for Pleasure   SHE HAD long reddish hair. Her eyes were such a dark blue they could be taken for brown, if you...

Peter Carey Life & Death in the South Side Pavilion   1.   I was employed, originally, as a Shepherd 3rd Class. That was in the days of...

Matt Lambert Tachycardia   He had lived long enough, and the world had changed enough, for the last two truths of his childhood to become...

Cathleen Townsend BabaYaga.com   Joe leaned against the bar and took a sip of his beer. “So, you see the possibilities, right? From where...

Reinaldo Arenas   The Glass Tower   EVER SINCE HE HAD ARRIVED in Miami, after the veritable odyssey of escaping his native country, noted...

Arturo Barea Grandmother’s Lesson Translator (Ilse Pollak / Ilsa Barea) If a man uncorks a bottle of vintage sherry and pours it down...

Luisa Valenzuela Strange Things Happen Here In the café on the comer—every self-respecting café is on a comer, every meeting place is a...

Richard Matheson Death Ship Mason saw it first. He was sitting in front of the lateral viewer taking notes as the ship cruised over the...

Lyon Sprague De Camp A Gun for a Dinosaur No, I’m sorry, Mr. Seligman, but I can’t take you hunting Late Mesozoic dinosaur. Yes, I know...

China Miéville An End To Hunger I met Aykan in a pub sometime late in 1997. I was with friends, and one of them was loudly talking about...

At the close of a grilling summer that had sapped the life from the city as insidiously as fever runs through veins and licks them up—at...

HELLO! – Ah, Clara, your voice sounded different. I thought it was your madam. Well, I’m so bored. Yes, well a few minutes back I was...

Bessie Head The Collector of Treasures The long-term central state prison in the south was a whole day‟s journey away from the villages...

Amabel Williams Ellis Listen, Kolya! (1917) SONIA was a conscientious girl, besides being pretty. She simply felt that in such times poor...

KIM NEWMAN A Victorian Ghost Story Kim Newman’s novels include The Night Mayor, Bad Dreams, Jago, The Quorum, Back in the USSA (with...

REMEMBERING RACHEL by Dave Creek If memory becomes a matter of choice, a lot of things get more complicated. Dacia’s comm...