"The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado"
T.C. Boyle
told in 3rd POV
From: Wild Child
Orig from: Playboy (I repeat, they still put fiction in there ( Read more... )

"Question 62"
T.C. Boyle
told in 3rd POV
From: Wild Child
Orig from: Harper's
story from 6/29

This is the simultaneous story of twin sisters. First, Mae, in California, looks up from gardening to lock eyes with a lion that has disappeared from the circus:

For a long while Mae crouched there in the wet earth, toying the idea of backing noiselessly across ( Read more... )

"Admiral"
T.C. Boyle
told in 3rd POV
From: Wild Child
Orig from: Harper's
story from 6/28

Continuing our salute to stories with a woman problem, here's TC Boyle again with "Admiral," which is about Nisha, who is flailing around after college, and decides to take the same exact job she had in high school, dog sitter for a nutty rich couple. There's a ( Read more... )

"The Huntsman"
Anton Chekov
told in 3rd Omn. POV
From Stories by Anton Chekov translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky ( Read more... )

"An Analysis of Some Troublesome Recent Behavior"
Alix Ohlin
3rd person
From Babylon

I started this, abandoned it and came back when I realized it was about the couple from "The Swanger Blood." I like it better than that story - it looked at the situation from the husband's POV. It was a totally different view of him; in the other story he was very ( Read more... )

"The Swanger Blood"
Alix Ohlin
3rd person
From Babylon
Orig. From: Southwest Review

I liked this story, but the end left me wanting. It was going in such a good direction - then bam, it was tied up and done before I was ready. I liked the opening, non-kid person Gayle describing the tantrum of her sister Erica's troubled son:

The kid was ( Read more... )

"Ghostwriting"
Alix Ohlin
3rd person
From Babylon
story for 8/19

Karin's son Marcus is heading to college, so it's empty nest time:

The next morning she started a journal, having read in magazines about the cathartic power of self-expression. Who am I? she wrote on a piece of lines paper. An ex-wife, a part copy editor, a mother in an empty ( Read more... )

"The Other Wife"
Colette
From: Single Scene Short Stories
told in 3rd POV
orig. from The Collected Stories of Colettestory for: 6/26 ( Read more... )

"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"
Katherine Porter
From: Single Scene Short Stories
told in 3rd POV
orig. from Flowering Judas and Other Storiesstory for: 6/25 ( Read more... )

"In the Warehouse"
Joyce Carol Oates
From: Single Scene Short Stories
told in 1st POV
orig. from Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been
story for: 6/24

I love my weird white chicks: JCO, Shirley Jackson, Flannery O'Connor. JCO kicks off with a story that seems like it's going to be a youth story about that kind of uneven friendship between a bully, ( Read more... )