Extracts

The paper is clean and white—

Every object has a ghost.

I was born blue, strangled by my own cord.

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever.”

This money diarist recently quit a toxic but well-paying tech job to run a small property business with her dad.

The day Sidonie Montot buried her uncle was never going to be a good day.

They became uncitizens.

The last time Ruth Rothwax had been with a group of Germans, she had wanted to poke their eyes out.

The sky was strewn with pepper-pot stars, reflected in the pond below.

The single drop of wee made a pitiful splash.

They’d rung the doorbell unannounced on a chilly Friday night.

The bullet enters Tia’s thigh close to where her brother will look for the star-shaped mole when asked to identify her body.

When Woodrow Wilson entered the lavish dining room aboard the presidential yacht . . .

Myron Bolitar was on the phone with his eighty-year-old father when the two FBI agents arrived to question him about the murder.

Each term we do a class project.

Monday: late winter, bad weather.

The sky was crying again.

I had one of my best and one of my worst days in the kitchen all in the same week.

Some people are natural storytellers.

I can’t get the sound of the camera shutter out of my mind.

Carrie had just dropped off to sleep when the tuba woke her.

Like most people, I’ve had my fair share of health issues.

There’s more to this story than the clickbait headlines, but yes, in simple terms, I had a dream life – then I took a flamethrower to it.

I dreamed that I dreamed about the musty grey soil of the island and the sweet perfume it emits after rainfall, a double remove from a place I will never visit again