"Vera is losing her grip on time. She's been driving all night, for days even, she can't say. She pulls over onto the shoulder of road next to the creek, her wheels rumbling across a muddy lump of plowed snow as she comes to a stop." To be young forever...is it really what you want? In this excerpt from a new novel, a woman born in the Catskills over two hundred years ago returns to her home, seeking the source of her immortality. What could go wrong?

"I don't remember how I heard about the burned girl. Probably it was my new friend Scot, with his spiritual leanings and whom I was seeing a lot of at that time, who told me. A new friend is useful in the kind of crisis that ensues when you are cutting your old life loose, or have had it cut loose for you." A woman's intimately-told meditation on how empathy for another's suffering may be crucial in weathering personal trauma.

"Affecting lightheartedness, I trod the moist pavements of the narrow streets. As though in tears and veiled, the lamps glimmered through the chill gloom and sucked their reflections slowly from the wet ground. The forgotten years of my youth came back to me. How I used to love the dark, sad evenings of late autumn and winter...." In this excerpt from a literary classic, a man meditates on his own nature and his difficult relationship with society. Maybe you understand his isolation; maybe not. Is alienation universal, or just for the few?

"The month was October, the day brilliant. Bareheaded, bald too young but well-bearded, a man not long past his youth strode along Bleecker, his comfortable shoes belying the business-like focus of his venture. His water-flow way of dodging fellow walkers was well-practiced, a city-dweller's skill used even as he hunted." Three lives intersect for reasons unknown. One has a strange gift: a poet who may be a seer. Does he really know the history and future of the world? Or maybe this is some sort of love story, who knows?

"I saw that Constance had emailed me suggesting we meet. She was embroiled in a mystery and needed my help. She would tell me more in person. We met on a bench in a park. The mystery was complicated. It involved two or more people who appeared to be one..." A man accompanies his friend to Paris to solve a mystery. But is it really a mystery, or something else? This is a story that challenges the very nature of storytelling---with a smile. Enjoy!

"The last time I saw my father I barely saw him. Now that morning seems sharp as shears but I know it wasn't. I was half-asleep. I think I made my way to the kitchen. I think my father was already starting to leave. We may have hugged." An enigmatic young woman tries to make sense of her life alone in an unnamed city full of demolitions and abandoned buildings. This metaphor-driven new novel from an award-winning author follows its narrator's fragmented insights on a path toward understanding.

"For three years, we knew Dad had a lump in his throat. He had trouble swallowing, and several times a day, he would be possessed by a mad coughing fit that would leave him clutching the furniture for support." In this opening from a highly-praised novel, an adult daughter begins to face her father's chronic pain, his impending death. How will she respond to his request for a merciful release?

"The scent of cardamom wafted from Father. Mother wore a liripipe of azure silk that drew out her narrow chin, hazel eyes, and the grey streaks in her hair. I watched Father's gaze dart among the hills. Columns of smoke crept through a windless sky." In this novel excerpt, a young man feigns madness, trades vision for vision amongst ruffians in a dark tavern, and meets his raven companions. But is this really his life story?

"'Listen to this,' he said. What sounded like a wind chime filled the room, a wind chime on a farmhouse porch, restless in a shifting tempest. I could feel a change in barometric pressure and a subtle increase in humidity as the sound floated on the breeze. The feeling was vast and lonely as though isolated on an American prairie." A recording engineer explores amazing new techniques. Can we capture the deep music made by nature? Can we invite the plants to help us? What could go wrong?

"The crowd that had gathered on the quay to watch the departure of Shadow Rose held no collective opinion as to whether she would return. Now that the chronology of those events has become so jumbled, it might be said that she never left." A sailing ship, a sunlit city, a young man's search. This reading, excerpted from a new collection of richly atmospheric short (and very short) stories, suggests unknown histories and unseen realities.