“Those diagrams are terribly optimistic,” the woman in the seat beside me said, eyeing the brochure as our plane climbed away from Manila. She spoke masterful English, clipped with a Filipino accent. “Let’s hope we never have to test that theory.”

Nita: So you thought I made you sign a release as, what, foreplay? [Laughter.] Voice: I was, like, four tequilas deep by the time you walked in and probably at five when you waved that paper in my face. I would’ve signed my soul away to . . . uh, I didn’t actually sign my soul over, did I?

Something in the lab smelled like nectarine jam. I looked up from the industrial autoclave, frowning...

She got into the elevator with him, the young woman from down the hall, the one he’d last seen at th...

I want to be broken, to be shattered, then reshaped into something new. Something with bulletproof s...

Jin left the last of his life’s concubines sobbing in shallow water. It was sad. He had loved the sw...