My mother is the weather. As a child, I was the core target to which she would unleash her hailstorms and earthquakes that tore me down and broke me into pieces.

“Going souling", they used to call it. I can remember m’grandad telling me he used to do it, when he were little, going round the houses and offering to say prayers for the dead, in exchange for these little cakes, soul cakes they called ‘em.

The world to Kieran Gilchrist had never made complete sense, even more so when he found his mum and dad stone-cold dead in their bed one rainy morning.

Anthony blinked and looked up in a vague haze. A face was staring down at him. It was a face he didn’t know.

Husselbee cleared his throat, rapped on the glass, and told the woman in the green polo shirt he had murdered a man.

“Did you guys know that this is the house where Richard Sabnis died?” said Tom Beardmore.

She returns to the kitchen and stops in her tracks. “Now, where’d I put the pork?

For seven weeks, three days and some number of hours we’ve come here; nocturnal pilgrims looking for answers — holding vigil while she drifts further from our grasp.

Most people would see that shoe and assume a drunken partygoer had forgotten it somehow, or that perhaps even a car had driven past and it had possibly fallen from the window unknowingly. But Jenny knew better.

Helen was born wrong. Her daddy wanted a son who'd grow up to take over the family manufacturing business. Helen didn't qualify. Mommy wanted a dainty little girl. Helen wasn't dainty.

Kevin's dad is convinced that there's one weed spawning all the others in his garden and he just needs to find it.

There is a bleached skeleton that holds no marrow

...I did something that’s been hanging around in my mind over the years, tucked down inside of me like a lucky charm that I don’t want to lose...

Byron has been to Mars. Now he's not supposed to leave New York and New England. For good reason.

Are halter-tops and half price Bermudas part of the grand design?