As expected on a Monday morning, the clinic’s waiting room was crowded. There were a few old couples who were quiet, with the wives generally reading and the husbands looking around or watching TV.

Laura used to wonder if all this planting of bodies would ever make anything grow. Then, one night, just as she finished a grave, she found it did.

The aftermath of the collision was silent and haunting. One car was on its side with crippled wheels spinning; the other was off the road in a shallow ditch.

“This is the one with the four suspects – all students of the watercolour artist who was found dead on the floor after teaching an art class.

In a forgotten corner of the city, at the end of a nondescript back alley, was a small health food shop. It had been there more than forty years and was once popular.

The killer should be here." Jerry tapped the screen with a knuckle. "But he's not.

Aspiring writers are generally advised to ‘show’ not ‘tell’ and to minimise their use of adverbs. But where’s the fun in that?

I muttered a quick prayer for my soul’s renewal, hoping the words would catch on the hawk’s wings and be taken to wherever such prayers should go.

Private Alexander Huxley sat in the hull of the C-47, jaw clenched and lips twisted into a savage grimace. The weight of his parachute kept him hunched in his seat, and the straps of his harness and weapon case chafed raw swathes into his skin.

Outwardly Seth didn’t react as he watched Mrs. Hatfield misplay the four spade contract, but inwardly he groaned. True, she made it, but most of the other pairs would make it with an overtrick.

I reach the Styx, whose sluggish waters remain inky even in the bright of day. Just as my guide said there would be, a queue of people in white chitons similar to mine line the river banks.

I dream of one day having a house that my mom and sister and I can all live in. I want one just like the gray house on the corner.

I won’t tell anyone about the diagnosis. Not my mother or sister. Certainly not Jake. Maybe not even Steve.

Sitting on the plane to Chicago, Mila wondered when exactly the idea had taken hold of her. Did the idea have an infancy or a childhood, or did it ground itself in the soil of her imagination like a full-grown poison tree?

Peter was tired. After 10 years of holding together the paperwork for “Johnson, A.P. – SSN 555-66-33xx,” his tensile strength was fading; he could feel his molecules beginning to degrade.