The Strange Recital

"It was early fall, 2001, and I was at the Rosebud Indian reservation to teach a class in Non-Violent Civil Disobedience."

Tobacco offerings, a sweat lodge... a young man not only meets a different culture, but experiences something beyond explanation. Can you ask for what you need? What dark future approaches?

"One sunny afternoon under clear skies the life of one Uretherer V. Lamb, 63, pataphysician, of Interlachen, Florida, was changed for all time."

The Grim Reaper visits Florida wearing a silly tie. One man's life is done...or is it? What happens if you subvert the cosmic order?

"'It was the girl.' The old man leaned forward, bracing against the worn-out armchair as though he were trying to escape its grasp. 'April Cooper. She was the real killer.'"

A podcast about a podcast about a long-ago murder spree. Crime ripples across generations. Can a broken family be mended? Can we ever really know someone?

"I went to the back window to start scouting for the Uberwolves...." Predators, floods, grid collapse. A survival story, a prescient vision of the future, or a metaphor for the end of a marriage? There's always Bach...

"My name is Lester Spanda now, but once I was known as Jack Dunne… Mad Dog Dunne, soldier of fortune!"

Can a mercenary killer find a spiritual path? Is redemption possible? Or... maybe it's all just a grandiose lie.

"Meno had been turning his mind over with a spade for weeks. Nothing. He was done. He was ready to retreat into the soft bosom of admitted failure...."

What is the power of this thing called "chance"? Can it create anything truly new? After all, meaning always changes with your angle of view.

"George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died. From the rented hospital bed, placed in the middle of his own living room, he saw insects running in and out of imaginary cracks in the ceiling plaster."

A Pulitzer-winning novel about generations of New England men begins with a death, then spirals backward in time. Fathers, sons, lives lived, the richness of language.

"'Do you have five minutes?' The best thing was not to answer. 'Why?' 'If you give me five minutes, I'll tell you my life.'"

A stranger stops you on the street. Do you listen? Maybe one childhood is like another. But whose story is being told here, anyway?

"The room had been ransacked, the dressing screen knocked over, Marni's wigs tossed askew. Her collection of carefully ironed cocktail dresses had been torn from the pasteboard wardrobe. The yellowed lingerie of a bygone era was cruelly scattered across the floor."

A faded B-movie star goes missing... but is that really the story here? Who's in charge, the programmer or the software?

"'I want to see my grave. To make sure you've dug it properly.' Otis spoke those words the day before he died."

A cave, a tiny garden, a vast empty landscape. Left alone in a ruined world, what will a young man do?