Thriller + Mystery

Old Miss Lavinia looked at the long staircase and sighed. It was time to move, and she knew it. She’d lived in the house at 2659 Flower Lane since she’d been a bride, over fifty-five years ago. The stairs had been nothing then. Now, they rose up before her – a personal Everest. She looked […]

Geppetto makes his doll from bones, from chicken legs and foxes’ ribs, a pig’s left shoulder, and the skull of an owl. He binds them together with catgut, then laces them tight and gets to work on miniature clothes. There are corded breeches, a harlequin shirt, a felted green hat, a yellow cape lined with […]

On a ship full of women, clashes of personality are to be expected. I knew from the day we set out from Thyborøn that my crewmates harboured doubts. They whispered unkind words about me – that I had the captain’s ear, that I was mærkelig, whatever that meant – but I tried not to listen. […]

CHAPTER 1 I owed him my life, and then one day, he came to claim it. The card arrived first, announcing his intention to visit. In appearance, it was no different from the last birthday card, or the one before that, or any other card he had sent: the same stiff over-square envelope licked carefully […]

Chapter 1 On Sundays, Jeanine and I got ready for games together. We’d trade off whose apartment we met at. My apartment had the smaller bathroom, but in my bedroom was a big vanity mirror where we could smear on makeup, outline our lips and eyes with slick crayons, and watch our faces brighten and […]

1964 The sideshow is a part of me. Crimson and cream strips wind about the helices of my genes. If I listen closely, I can still hear the calliope, its fluting notes echoing in the water traveling through the pipes in the walls. Sometimes, the shouting of the warden takes on the authoritative bark of […]

1 “It sounds like cats dying.” She said it in the glum tone of a child only just now being introduced to the disappointments life had in store. Mark Provaunce felt a twinge in his chest at the sound of it, thinking for the third time that morning of how his little girl was not […]

I had the White Claw all shaken up and ready to go when Shari texted me, asking to talk. There wasn’t time to wonder what she wanted. I shot her a quick thumbs up and turned back to my webcam. I unhooked my itchy 44GG bra, adjusted the ring light, and switched on the livestream.

Pipeline Parents find little pink shoes at the gate between Pipeline Estate and Ezechi Estate. They squint at the dense forest of knotted trees and leafless shrubs that stretch thin like fingers behind the gate, the piece of land where Ezechi Estate begins. They look out for anything strange sifting through the trees. The pink […]

I spend the entire flight from Oakland to Florence telling myself I am safe. Every time I get up to use the bathroom, I expect to see my husband in one of the seats, or in the mirror behind me. I half expect to find him waiting for me at the arrival gate, or at […]

It’s not like I was going to marry him; we were just shacking up. But I was surprised Benji had the kind of money where he could buy a house. The real estate agent, Ryan, couldn’t have been much older than us, but his loafers, his aftershave, and his hair comb made him seem downright […]

December 30, 2018 Dear Wade, You know Arnie’s Gas, Bait & Tackle? I’ve always wondered why he built it where he did, on that dusty strip by the community college, all the way across town from the lake. The first time I stopped there for gas—a decade ago, just out of college and moving to […]