THE VIKING POET Listen! I am the wolf who walks your nights. The horror who haunts your days. Hear me—I am the soldier who slays the sinners. Come, sinner, you who violate the Law. Walk with me. Am I not fair company? We will spend tonight together. And if you cannot answer my riddle, then Read more
The call came through the office landline, through a system that was at least twenty years old and had fought off all technological advances. It was taken by a tattooed receptionist named Felicity, a new girl who would be gone before she fully understood the phones. They were all leaving, it seemed, especially the clerical Read more
She straightened the emergency supplies she’d picked up at the store, adding them to the storm kit—four gallons of distilled water, about a dozen flashlights, batteries in all shapes and sizes, candles, matches, canned goods, one battery-powered NOAA Weather Radio, and of course, the bottle of vodka she stashed under the sink behind the floor Read more
It was supposed to rain for real and that would have put a damper on the annual rain of lead. But the forecast was wrong. The sky was blue-black and clear. And Renée Ballard braced for the onslaught, positioning herself on the north side of the division under the shelter of the Cahuenga overpass. She Read more
1. Leo spun to life in late July in the restless waters of the far eastern Atlantic, about two hundred miles west of Cape Verde. He was soon spotted from space, properly named, and classified as a mere tropical depression. Within hours he had been upgraded to a tropical storm. For a month, strong dry Read more
“I really don’t understand the appeal, do you?” Derek Ritzeman yammered on from the driver’s seat. He did not wait for his girlfriend to answer before he continued, just as she hadn’t expected him to. Derek always became rhetorical when he was in a snit. “I mean, we’ve got to deal with noise and pollution Read more
For the first time in her life, she cradled her daughter in her arms.All those years ago, the nurse at the hospital had asked if she wanted to hold her baby, but she had refused. Refused to name the girl. Refused to sign the legal papers to let her go. Hedging her bets, because that’s Read more
Thursday, noon Bea Abbot, sixtyish and widowed but coping pretty well with life, answered the phone by saying, ‘Abbot Agency. How may I help you?’ The voice at the other end quacked away. Bea recoiled. ‘We are not that kind of agency. We do not supply girls for … no, certainly not!’ She put the Read more
Joe and I were in the back seat of a black sedan, cruising along a motorway from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The sky was gray, but shafts of light pierced the clouds, lighting up brilliant swaths of tulips in fields along A44. I had never been to the Read more
The representations of thovil and hooniyam in this novel are informed by many, sometimes conflicting, anecdotal accounts, as well as the writings of the anthropologists Nandadeva Wijesekera and Bruce Kapferer. The practice of hooniyam is often shrouded in secrecy, and it encompasses many types of rituals that are intended to cause harm to a selected Read more
