As a species, tragedy dwells within us all. We push it to the back of our thoughts, but it is never so far gone that it cannot return, crashing and writhing into our souls: a rogue wave overturning a boat on a calm day. Tragedy is never more than a b...
But Annabeth just smiled and put us in jail. As she was heading back to the front line, she turned and winked. "See you at the fireworks?" She didn't even wait for my answer before darting off into the woods. I looked at Beckendorf. "Did she just...a...
I'll show up at every classroom open house and teacher conference,' she said, now in a voice that was almost frightening in its intensity. 'I'll bake brownies. My child will have new clothes. Her shoes will fit. She'll get her shots, and she'll get h...
One picks one's way about through the glass and aluminum doors, the receptionists' smiles, the lunches with too much alcohol, the openings with more, the mobs of people desperately trying to define good taste in such loud voices one can hardly hear o...
December 29, 1946: Snowing this morning. The year seems to be dying in a light white blanket. Only three more days of this year, then comes a new one. Then, what? No one knows. -- Diary of Bertha Kate Gaddis who passed away 6 months later, age 78, We...
He wondered if today was that day, if he’d wake up different, wake up someone else who remembered him fondly. A new Doctor. He wondered if he’d approve. Would he be more gentle? That might not be so bad. More vengeful? He hoped not. Maybe he’d ...
That's why I bake. To fill fairies with goodness." And it was true, she realized. She didn't run the kitchen just to boss other fairies around. She didn't give orders just to make herself feel important. Well, at least she wouldn't anymore. No. The d...
It was never the poverty that deterred me, never the disease, unsanitary conditions, bugs or garbage, those things were never even a thought in my head as a reason for not staying. I kept looking for the good and always found it each day. I was happy...
Tipsy, they tumbled early into bed - to get as much sleep as they could. So they would feel less hunger. The summer catch had been poor; there wasn't much food. They ate with care and looked sideways at the old: the old were gluttons, everybody knew ...
How are you feeling?" I leaned away from him. "Gross." Aiden frowned. "Gross?" "I haven't brushed my teeth or washed my face in days. Don't come near me." He laughed. "Alex, come on." "Seriously, I'm gross." I put my hand over my mouth. Ignoring my p...
Regin to Declan: "Lemme guess," Regin said. "You had your introductory spiel all planned, but rational thought deserted you when you saw me stroll in braless."-- --"For the record," She continued, "it's not my fault I came in here looking like Chesty...
What have you done with Hetty?" he demanded. "Listened to her incessant prattle, complaints, tears, demands, artless conversation and recriminations for more than twenty-four hours. You will be pleased to know I didn't touch her—if I had I would ha...
As he passed a hand over his eyes, I recalled the he could not have slept more than twenty hours in the last seven days. For the first time since I had known him, Sherlock Holmes appeared to be exhausted by work rather than inaction. "Because if I am...
No single man makes history. History cannot be seen, just as one cannot see grass growing. Wars and revolutions, kings and Robespierres, are history's organic agents, its yeast. But revolutions are made by fanatical men of action with one-track mind,...
On a nightstand in a teenager’s room, a glass vase filled with violets leans precariously against a wall. The only thing saving the vase from a thousand-piece death on the hardwood floor is the groove in the nightstand’s surface that catches the ...
Nicholas Benedict did have an exceptional gift for knowing things (more exceptional, in fact, than most adults would have thought possible), and yet not even he could know that this next chapter was to be the most unusual-and most important-of his en...
Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. As the man looks back to the d...
I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation. I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, ...
Sometimes, there aren't any good choices. Sometimes, making the right one is hard... It's funny, but when you think about it, we're all broken. That's what life does. It knocks you down and breaks you and you either get back up again, or you don't. Y...
She planted that terror of debt so deeply in her children that even now, in a changed economic pattern where indebtedness is a part of living, I become restless when a bill is two days overdue. Olive never accepted the time-payment plan when it becam...
I want to write a book called, “Son, I’m dying,” where I visualize the day my estranged dad calls me out of the blue to tell me he is dying, and in as many ways as possible I’ll offer up various responses to that.
