And she arose from her deathbed in a gossamer gown, with eyes the color of starlight and hair as black as the night. And those who were her captors trembled, for the scent of death and madness emanated from her soul, and yet she was not dead. She mov...
My face responds without authorization from my brain, so the resulting smile feels like the biggest, most unguarded, goofiest smile I’ve ever unleashed in my entire life. I didn’t even know my face could do this. It’s like there were hidden zip...
Oh! that look of love!" continued he, between his teeth, as he bolted himself into his own private room. "And that cursed lie; which showed some terrible shame in the background, to be kept from the light in which I thought she lived perpetually! Oh,...
Excuse me,’ I said cheerily. ‘Is the job still going?’ I pointed to the notice. ‘Of course,’ he said, looking back at me with a warm smile. I think he was as hopeful as I was about where this could lead to. ‘We need all the hands we can g...
One word more. You look as if you thought it tainted you to be loved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I, if I would, cannot cleanse you from it. But I would not, if I could. I have never loved any woman before: my life has been too busy, my thoughts ...
He were found drowned. He were coming home very hopeless o' aught on earth. He thought God could na be harder than men; mappen not so hard; mappen as tender as a mother; mappen tenderer. I'm not saying he did right, and I'm not saying he didn't wrong...
It would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there's no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth. Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished wo...
Ramon looked closely at the little guy as he ate. "Maybe he's Jewish. I mean, if Sammy Davis Jr. could convert to Judaism, why not a chupacabra? We should name him Harry Mendelbaum." I held up my arms in protest. "You're all racist. Now shut up. We'l...
No, it was simply that I was uninterested in making, as I saw it, a Xerox of some old emotional state. I was in my mid-thirties, with a marriage more or less behind me. I was no longer vulnerable to curiosity's enormous momentum. I had nothing new to...
Had Mary Shelley fretted so? Maybe yes, maybe no. She’d begun her classic work on a dare. Had culled a dream to bring it into being. But it was not lost on Laura that the story might be a prolonged exercise in Shelley’s personal terrors. The subt...
If you're so into badsides, you should have become a doctor, so you could see a new one every day." "I don't want to see everybody's," he said from behind her, so close his breath brushed her neck. "I have standards, and let me tell you, in those tig...
If you're so into backsides, you should have become a doctor, so you could see a new one every day." "I don't want to see everybody's," he said from behind her, so close his breath brushed her neck. "I have standards, and let me tell you, in those ti...
[...] He plays the guitar so well, you wouldn't believe it. But he doesn't have a band. And he doesn't try really hard to get one. He mostly plays alone in his room instead. That's what Kristen says. I think he does this for the same reason Hannah do...
If writers only dared to dare, a Suetonius or a Tacitus of the Novel could exist, for the Novel is essentially the history of manners, turned into a story and a play, as is History itself often enough. And there is no other difference than this: that...
One day Augustus asked Newt to ride along with him, much to Newt’s surprise. In the morning they saw a grizzly, but the bear was far upwind and didn’t scent them. It was a beautiful day—no clouds in the sky. Augustus rode with his big rifle pro...
He kept one eye on Matt as he talked. He could tell Matt was close to orgasm by the way he title his head to the side and bit his lower lip. "And what about your partner, Mr. Tucker?" Troy asked. Chris raised his eyebrows in surprise and Mr. Waters g...
But who could resist the erotic lives of atoms and molecules - the violent passion of electrostatic attractions, the comfortable mutuality of covalent bonds, the gentle air kisses of van der Waals forces? The rules governing the couplings and uncoupl...
It was September, and there was a crackly feeling to the air. I was saying something that was making her laugh, and I couldn't stop looking at her. It was a little bit chilly, and her cheeks were pink, and her dark hair was flowing around her face. A...
The fact that in the twentieth century a greater proportion of the people in the world could communicate with one another, using English or just a few other languages, appears not to have stopped any wars, nor to have reduced the frequency with which...
...this refinement and delicacy were what Cale adored; but Cale had been beaten into shape, hammered in dreadful fires of fear and pain. How could she be with him for long? A secret part of Arbell had been searching for some time for a way to leave h...
Now, this is where I draw the line! It's bad enough everybody in town's going to be thinkin' I'm sleeping with a depressed, lice-ridden, hemorrhoidal foreigner who likes to be tied up and might be pregnant, although-since she's just about cornered th...
