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Fiction

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Monticello
The scene: Just before midnight, July 3, 1826, at Monticello. Thomas Jefferson is gravely ill after a series of strokes. The next day is the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and Jefferson is widely expected to make a public statement. His pro-slavery ...

Bitter River
October 12, 2015
Impeccable John Connerly stepped through the front door of his home in Rio Agrio. He looked at the sky for weather, then made his way down the cobbles toward the main street of the village. From behind a curtained window, Kymbat watched him move with handsome purpose, as though ...

Life after Death
Life after Death? Yes. Can I help you? Well, you know . . . I saw your ad in that travel magazine. AFAR? or Destinations? I don’t remember. It was at the doctor’s office. Does that matter? Just wondering. It wouldn’t have been The New Yorker would it? One of those little ...

From Aurora
Excerpted from Kim Stanley Robinson’s new novel Aurora, published July 7, 2015, by Orbit Books. So there they were: in the ship, in orbit around Aurora, which was in orbit around Planet E, which orbited Tau Ceti, 11.88 light years away from Sol and Earth. Now there were 1,997 ...

Side Boob and Insensibility
ED. NOTE—In keeping with the current (and, some might say, callous) publishing craze for updating Jane Austen’s work—Alexander McCall Smith was requested to “reimagine” Emma, for example, and had the nerve to comply—we offer you the following short account of a ...

Fountain
November’s first snow fell overnight. Outside the city, the mountains gleamed powdery in the morning sunlight, but the snow did not stick on the streets of Dushanbe. By the time Parviz Rajabi stepped down from the bus on Rudaki it had mostly melted. He was a news reporter. He ...

Gustus Dei
The convent sat on a waterless plain. Sister Theresa rested on a bench at the edge of the convent garden. She looked up at the clouds. She imagined them thickening, curdling, manifesting. Manna would drop slowly and drift to the ground like snowflakes. She and her sisters would ...

How Much Women Know
This story concerns a perfect girl, raised by her perfect mother and grandmother. Three ageless beauties, crème de la crème of Moscow’s Jewish intelligentsia. The grandmother resembled a charming infant. A former pianist, she wore lace gloves in the summer. The mother, a ...

Story of an Illness
To tell you the truth, I much prefer to be sick at home. At a hospital, no question, the light bulbs are stronger and things are more scientific in general. But at home, as they say, even straw tastes better. Judge for yourselves. My family brings me to the hospital with typhoid ...

For Yama Is the Lord of Death
A: Because I guess my overall numbers are not where they should be? That’s what Rhimst said. He had the numbers all printed out. Numbers for the month, the quarter, the year, and then the projections. The projections, I think, did not look good. At least that was the feeling I ...

Bizness
If you were born in a decent, settled country, you may work for decades as an accountant, you may eat a nutritious dinner every night, and then you may die peacefully in your fluffy little bed, thinking you have lived a life. Not so in my country. Its path is capricious and ...

Among Friends
I’m a direct person, always smirking and poking fun when we all get together at Marisha and Serge’s on Fridays. Everybody comes. If one of us misses a Friday, it’s because he or she couldn’t get away, or has been banished by the enraged Marisha or the entire gang. Andrey ...