In the Beginning | Peg Alford Pursell

"Her father likes to tell the story of her beginning, as a blue baby. She has heard it two times before, a memorable magnitude when it comes to her taciturn father..."

The Ground Between Us | Justine Young

"The boy was sitting on the edge of the roof, his bare feet dangling freely in the open air. His soles looked dirty even from where I was sitting..."

Valley Dog | Kathryn Hill

"When I lay down on the hostel bed, I remember the dog I saw once on the freeway to Paradise Valley. The dog was dead, its fur the color of old teeth, its body buttressed with gravel and dust..."

|| | Andrew Mitin

"The glass stem fluctuates in size, now trim, now robust, and I wonder how the burgundy does not leap from the bowl..."

The Depression, The Cold War, and The Chemist | M. F. McAuliffe

"He knows what the radiation’s done. He didn’t know for years; then he let himself suspect. And after that the job he had was still the best job he could get..."

Devonian | Łukasz Drobnik

"Ferns stretch their feathery leaves like lazy barnacles reaching out for plankton. There are pine cones and pine needles crackling under our feet..."