The Publishing Mystery That No One Wants to Talk About
A minimally speaking autistic man just wrote a best-selling book. Or did he?
Fiction
The Paradox of Modern Medicine
Testing has become so advanced that doctors now miss important elements of diagnosis.
What Does Lena Dunham Want to Tell Us?
Her new memoir captures the cost of being an impossibly popular target.
The Eighth Deadly Sin
Humankind has devised a new form of debasement.
Six Books That Simply Must Be Talked About
These six books demand discussion—with a pal, a date, or a book club.
Nine Books to Reset Your View of the World
Each of these titles will widen your perspective, offering you original insight and vision.
Seven Books to Read When You Have No Time to Read
These titles are worth picking up, even if you have only a moment to spare.
Six Books You Can Get Lost In
These novels highlight the power—both good and bad—of unchecked fantasizing.
Hopefulness
I’d become obsessed with my Neighborhood Watch duties, and my wife had taken up with Bob Martin. What bothers me is not the thought of Bob kissing my wife’s neck, or the thought of Bob putting my kids on his shoulders somewhere in Missouri, or that the Martin place has gone to hell under my watch. What bothers me, and repeatedly plays over in my mind, is the morning my wife left.
Visiting
He had become used to the way Marc turned questions around. His son was like Superman in that way, catching bullets in his hand and redirecting them. His own father had never answered his questions. He was not sure which was worse, to be mocked or to be ignored.
A Simple Case
Paiko had been waiting for his girlfriend to have sex with her last client when the police raided the brothel. “You will soon be released,” the Sergeant had kept telling him. So why was he now standing before the President and Commander in Chief of the Jungle Republic, the kangaroo court in Area F, which had “the worst torture chamber in the whole of this country”? And could the power of his storytelling save him?
Bone Hinge
The place where we are joined is a secret place for Hattie and me, especially since everyone always wants to look at it—a bone hinge covered in smooth skin, our spines locked together at the base. Lately, though, Hattie hates our hinge. She has fallen in love with Matthew, and he has proposed to her.
Voices of Love
“I was dying with shame under the sheet. June was my best friend.”“She put the light out and unbuttoned my shirt. This was the first sex of my life. It was heaven.”“I was a waiter in Provincetown. My life changed when I met Ken.”“My husband, Byron, was a terrible diplomat. He quarreled with his colleagues and neglected me.”
Least Resistance
Holding her hand in the coffee shop, I realized how close I’d come to blowing it with the one person in my life who needed me. Her family was back in Oregon. Her husband was distracted, about to lose his reputation and business if he couldn’t pull it together. And here I was, listening.
PS
What I know now is that I should not have continued shelling out 200bucks a pop to you. On some days I felt you two were picking up a frequency like a dog whistle that I just wasn’t able to hear. Of course, you might just have a great gift for empathy, but then I’d have to ask where was this gift when Jerry was trying to have me committed to the attic like that woman in Jane Eyre who set everything on fire.
Fish Story
It was a swollen, gasping, netherworld creature. We had no tub big enough for it. Men came over and placed lanterns on the ground all around it, like candelabra at a dinner setting. I hoped it would die before they skinned it. Do you ever think those days were different, that time had not yet been corrupted?
Alba
Último knew people claimed they’d seen Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary and even Jesus Christ. But this was Alba, an ordinary girl from Ricardo Flores. She had on shorts and a pale blouse, and her face was conflicted with desire. “Let me make a fire,” he said to her. “You must be cold.”
Furlough
Colleen was coming home from Iraq. Henry worried about how the girls would react when they saw their mother again after all this time, when they saw how she’d changed. And then there was Moira, Colleen’s sister. She was like a surrogate mother now. Almost a surrogate wife.