helly got home from school and checked the mail.  Two neighbors stood in the hallway, and there was some hubbub.  Mr. Huang, an unmarried middle-aged man, talked excitedly with Mrs. Kendall, an elderly woman always in a floral night dress and orthopedic hose.  “Shelly, we have a new neighbor,”...

p into the mountains to bring Lip and his woman food and dressings for the impending birth of their baby, but Lip was already paranoid and disheveled. I found him in a clump of sodden trees that sheltered a falling-down shed. He faced away from me, holding a Kalashnikov and craning his neck to get a better...

ost corpses look nothing like their living counterparts, but for some reason Henry’s dead body resembled his living one perfectly.  Every detail about his face was perfectly in order. His lip was subtly twisted into the hint of a smile that would rise when he was playing a joke on his grandkids, or hiding...