He was the first customer of the day. I pulled out my earbud and stuck my phone in my back pocket. Then I checked my tablet to confirm his name. “Hello… Robert?” The man looked up from his seat. He… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

A symphony of action and reaction played between mirrors in the window display of the small shop in the New Orleans French Quarter. Once inside, Etta surrendered to the fantasy. Convex and concave reflections faced one another in one corner.… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

No, I don’t want a cigarette. *** Everything was going according to plan. I met my contact in a dingy bar in the bowels of a low-class brothel.  A cesspool of thieves and perverts looking to ply their sick fantasies… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

I heard footsteps come into the house. Then, silence. As young girls, after we helped plant vegetables in the garden, my older sister Ammara and I would fill our straw baskets with mangoes and climb to a high place on… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

Mrs. Jane Kotwitz eyed the lesson plan with curious disapproval. Typed neatly with plenty of white margin for notes, the plan for third hour simply read, “Paxton — reading. He takes the lone seat by the windows.” Mrs. Kotwitz’s eyes… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.

Andromache thought that when they burned Hector upon his pyre, they should just burn the rest of Troy with him. It was to happen soon anyway, without him to guard their gates, and she had told him as much, the… Continue Reading → Continue reading at the publisher's website.