The Monkey and the Metallurgist
The Strange Recital
"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!
info_outline
Tidal Lock
The Strange Recital
"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.
info_outline
Naked Singularity
The Strange Recital
"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?
info_outline
The Constable's Second Autobiography
The Strange Recital
"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?
info_outline
Found Objects
The Strange Recital
"'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?
info_outline
The Right Moment
The Strange Recital
"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.
info_outline
Zone 23
The Strange Recital
"In a world of comfort and infinite abundance, Valentina Briggs was sitting quietly, doing nothing, trying to detach... kneeling on the floor, her buttocks resting on her upturned feet, hands forming an oval in her lap, thumbs ever so lightly touching, trying her best to think of not thinking. Thoughts were racing through her mind." If meditation isn't working, what's a Variant-Positive Normal woman to do? A possible future of genetic "correction" to establish peace on Earth is explored in this satiric novel by an outspoken critic of authoritarian government.
info_outline
The Zodiacal Light
The Strange Recital
"The zodiacal light is very faint and so are we, from hunger, a hunger for the stars, the stars we can never reach. Yes, it is faint and so are our hopes, but that doesn’t matter if we enjoy the standing and reaching, on the shoulders of our friends, on a ladder, on chairs piled on chairs. We are nearer the stars that way." Like a few gems in one's palm, here are several very short fictions that explore, from angles you've never seen before, the signs of Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo...
info_outline
The River Between Us
The Strange Recital
"For what must have been the hundredth time that long day I studied the second hand of my watch, a heavy blue-faced Bulova that my wife had spent way too much on for our first wedding anniversary. It had outlasted our marriage and was still keeping perfect time, which was no small comfort." As this novel begins, a divorced, depressed architect is about to embark on a life-changing project. A crumbling riverside mansion awaits, along with its challenging inhabitants. What happens when we attempt to face the trauma of our past?
info_outline
Another War
The Strange Recital
"When the bombing started, J.T. Carter was deep in the bowels of a bank in Baltimore with a video camera on his shoulder, capturing, cinema verité, the mundane fate of everyone’s rent check." Desert Storm, 1991. And more foreign wars to follow. At home, we live our safe American lives full of domestic tedium and drama. Here is one man's story.
info_outline