Translated from French By Alys Eyre Macklin

As ten o'clock struck, M. de Hartevel emptied a last tankard of beer, folded his newspaper, stretched himself, yawned, and slowly rose.

The hanging-lamp cast a bright light on the tablecloth, over which were scattered piles of shot and cartridge wads.  Near the fireplace, in the shadow, a woman lay back in a deep armchair.

Outside the wind blew violently against the windows, the rain beat noisily on the glass, and from time to time deep bayings came from the kennel where the hounds had struggled, and strained since morning.

There were forty of them: big mastiffs with ugly fangs, stiff-haired griffons of Vendee, that...

Translated from French By Alys Eyre Macklin

Ravenot, debt collector to the same bank for ten years, was a model employee.  Never had there been the least cause to find fault with him.  Never had the slightest error been detected in his books.

Living alone, carefully avoiding new acquaintances, keeping out of cafes and without love-affairs, he seemed happy, quite content with his lot.  If it were sometimes said in his hearing: "It must be a temptation to handle such large sums!" he would quietly reply: "Why? Money that doesn't belong to you is not money."

In the locality in which he lived he was looked upon as a paragon, his advice sought after and...

Translated by Sheryl Curtis

It was a stormy night and TF1 was broadcasting an old episode of Fantômas. The credits had just started when someone pounded on the mechanical shutter of the front door: heavy, violent, rhythmic blows. Like the beating of a heart, but a heart in turmoil, on the verge of exploding. A noise made all the more unsettling by the rain-lashed PVC.

Sitting in her leather armchair, Mama stood up abruptly, then looked at my father, worried. Who could that be, her eyes screamed.

Waking with a start, Dad sighed. The day spent with the family had taken its toll on him. Between the barbecue, the soccer game and the stroll at the Platier d’Oye, the natural reservoir where we occasionally liked to spend time, he’d spent the day on the go. The heavy heat that overwhelmed us had done nothing to improve his temper...

“I heard a bell ringing by the garden wall, and a voice in the stillness of the night calling on all good people to pray for the souls of the dead, it being All Souls’ Eve.”

—Charles Dickens

    
The new boy pounded on the door nine times before Sorsha Sarin, her long skirt flying, finally caught up with him, reaching up as high as she could to catch his fist in hers lest it hit the door again.

The other children skidded to a halt as they, too, reached the door, clustering around it, breathing hard. The older ones held lanterns that flickered feebly in the Irish twilight, each like a will o’ the wisp. It was the one night of the year they could legitimately beg their neighbors for specially prepared extra food, in preparation for the morrow of prayer and...

She brings the heels of her shoes down onto the papers spread over the table between us, and I’m pressed up against the back of my chair, not quite shaking, not quite still. Yesterday, she took out my neck with a swing of the edge of her hand. That’s not a blow from which you can easily recover. My head was hanging from my shoulders by a string.

She cranes her chin back because she’s bored around me. I was talking just a moment ago; now I’ve lost my nerve, and either way she has no motivation to listen, because I’m no one, and in her mind she’s the Sun God. She pops the front two feet of her chair off the ground, and it terrifies me, because everything she does terrifies me. I can’t tell what I’m looking at anymore. I’ve got no sense of judgment.

She’s watching the sky, where the golden stars change places every...

PART 1: BLOOD ALCOHOL CONTENT

"Ugly people are evil?” Mark asked, laughing.

“That’s not what I said. If you look at a large majority of books and movies, there is often an unattractive antagonist to indicate some lapse in morality. Maybe they have a scar, or some type of exaggerated deformity that distinguishes them from the heroes. Regardless, it is that very distinction that provides an automatic guilty verdict from the audience before the opportunity for crime occurs. It all falls back to our obsession with appearances,” Will said.

“Why are you telling me this?” Mark asked.

“Because you are obsessed with image,” Will replied. “You have fallen into a permanent state of superficiality that holds no weight outside of fiction. You are either callous or...

A bolt of blue and silver lightning ripped the ground open.  As Tamara scrambled to get up, searing heat slashed through her side.

Another flash of lightening struck in front of her.  It looked like an electrical storm, but she never saw lightning strike sideways.

She inhaled sharply, grasping her arm.  In a daze, she looked down, and saw blood running between her fingers.

She turned to run, but stumbled and fell backwards.

Tamara opened her eyes to see glistening stars scattered among a night sky. 

“Beautiful,” she whispered.

She rose to a sitting position, and realized she was in the middle of a field.  Regardless of her injury, she was eager to see the castle and join the ball.  But, when she eyed a thick forest of pine trees, she became more...

Whiirrr, chugga chugga brrrrrrr…

Eddie Reichert’s eyes popped open, the last tenants of the nightmare he’d been having fading as the world around him came into focus.

The sound of an un-muffled engine assaulted the silent sanctity of the night.

It sounded like a lawnmower.

Eddie glanced at his digital clock. Blurry red numbers taunted him, proclaiming it was just past two in the morning.

Who… lawnmower… this time…night?He tried to think, but the quickness with which he awoke, and the hour of the night, precluded coherent thoughts.

He rolled out of bed, bringing his legs down beneath him as his torso cleared the edge. Facing the rumpled blanket and disheveled pillows, he tried to remember why he was up.

...

When Eira lifted the scented, cotton-fiber envelope from amidst the bills and flyers, her fingers tightened on her car keys.  She stood in the post office, reading the name several times before she could believe it.

Adalee Howard.

Eira flipped it over.  A note scribbled in delicate Copperplate calligraphy under the thick wax seal said, Regarding your request.

A pain in her left hand tore her attention away from the letter.  Eira forced her hand to unclench, and immediately grimaced at the oozing puncture wound her house key had left in the meat of her palm. 

She looked back at her Aunt Adalee’s...

Jenny had loved being an engineer once.  She knew it somewhere in the back of her mind, remembered it a little bit, but it didn't seem to mean anything to her anymore.  It was something she had once loved, like ballet, or Thomas Alison.  It was something that had once mattered.  Now—unlike ballet or Tom Alison—it was just something she had to deal with day in and day out.

She had thought that her professional cheer was keeping up appearances, but Russ, her team lead, called her in one Friday afternoon.

"I think I've noticed some frustration from you on the Choe project.  Is there anything I can do about that?" he asked.

"I'm fine, thanks."

"I don't think you are, Jen.  Your enthusiasm on this project has been way down."

"It's nothing new," she snapped...