I’d not long been made journeyman when the Schöpfers’ Guild gave me my first commission in 1928. Frau Leitner from Bavaria had written to request a small restoration–I took the so…

"Little things get little gods. It's only natural."

There are two diners in Athens, Ohio.

If there's one thing Anat knows, it's this. She loves Oscar her brother, and her brother Oscar loves her.

Zara’s response was the best one, when he told her his diagnosis. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry we as scientists haven’t fixed this yet. That we haven&…

Ming called Sopha a haunted child. The monks at the village wat looped red strings around her wrists to keep her spirit from being carried off, but we always knew she only half belonged to us.

The story of the Red Bride is a slave's tale in slave speech, which I do not generally hold in my head around humans lest my face betray me.

«They're coming,» Rosa said. She was out of breath, and Alex watched her put one hand on the door frame to steady herself. So much for hope, Alex thought.

Remember to tread as gently as possible in the Museum of Printing History, for these machines are delicate. They have withstood wars and insurrections, high-level humidity, and long droughts. They …

You bear our weight on your leg; when you tire, I bear our weight on mine. We work our two eyes together.

We told you what we told every pilgrim: if your health wasn't bad, you had to stay with us a year before we'd lead you into the depths, before an angel would show you to the sapphire gate. Before w…

I was going to St. Louis inasmuch as I'm ever going anywhere. Not all who wander are lost, sure, but at that point, I definitely was.

Suddenly people remembered older stories, the kind where people die, and are reborn, and birth is difficult. The end of the world just made it worse.

His skin wasn’t brown, or even a man’s skin any more, but instead glistening, polished alabaster. They’d even cast his inner ear in the stuff, and his fingernails; Akeem was willing to bet that Cai…

I promised my family I would turn away from my studies, all the while resolving to continue in secret. I committed everything I knew to memory, burned all my papers, and embroidered my most unfath…

Yann kept the dynamite in his coat closet. I smelled it as soon as he let me in.

That morning, at great personal risk, Stephen's waffle iron attempted to tell him something.

I was never brave or mad enough to fly from a bridge. I should never have been mad enough to eat that apple.

"I can guess his goddamn origin: Disaffected rich kid. Fled America and trained with mystical Eastern warriors. Soon became the best—one year at ninja camp is always enough time for a gringo …

I didn't tell my brother that we'd been eating our father's cremains until a few days had passed. I know Ben well enough to know that he needs to be eased into things.

When Nina first met Owl-with-a-capital-O, harbinger of death, destruction, and despair, He resembled Athene cunicularia, a wee burrower.

If she’d asked anyone out in the town, they would have happily told her the town is always empty and the hotel is always full, because those who pay for a night don’t always rise in the morning. Bu…

“They fly very swiftly, and prey upon the wing, being of great use to mankind, in clearing the air of innumerable little flies.” —Chambers Cyclopedia.

The government was busy drinking. The lights were always blinking and going out in various parts of town. “Neighborhood’s winking up at God,” my grandmother used to say on nights like that. “But yo…

Nobody pays attention to a slump-backed brownish girl with droopy-lidded eyes. She's got all the genes that make her look Less Human, according to the Important powers that be.

Living with the harpy presented certain difficulties. Her feathers clogged the shower drain, and the smell of unsavory meats cooked over chemical fires drifted from her room. She screamed profanity…