Short Fiction

An Aser story.It's not always wrong to hide your emotions, and sometimes it's even a good idea to let people know when you're upset. However, if your job is to be attentive to patrons, then perhaps personal drama ought to take a back seat to making sure that the people who pay your wages are taken care of ...

Katrina Stonoff reviews Dorothy Allred Solomon's memoir "Daughter of the Saints," about being raised in a polygamist home.

Kaine and Jynx are kind of cute, kind of annoying, and very mysterious. The bounty hunter Kumiko isn't entirely sure she wants to be around them, but it seems their paths are intertwined ...

The City of One Hundred Spires is far richer than what you see in the travel brochures. However, if you want to sample the real flavor of Prague, you have to know the right places to look ...

Why don't littering laws apply to your mailbox?

<b>Prologue: A Brief History of Angel City and the Collapse of the Shaman Rail Line</b><br><br> <p>2000 years ago, the Four Great Ships <i>Salvation, Absolution, Redemption</i> and <i>Phoenix</i>, crossed the edge of a dying universe and entered another to start life anew. Aboard <i>Salvation</i> were three psychics, Talon Konstantine, his daughter, Regan, and Daigoro. Each of them possessed the powers of the three star angels, Shaman, Firefly and Yuusei, who were created when the universe was born to protect the creatures of the universe from threats like the Void that had consumed the one from which they had so recently fled. The chronicles written at that time claim the existence of a fourth star angel psychic, called Samurai, who stayed behind to seal the Void. There is no evidence today of this mysterious fourth psychic except that the Void has not encroached this universe.

What kind of house suits you?

Memories of summer -- the baseball games, the lightning bugs who clung to the sunflower leaves during the day, the time with family, the outings with friends ... this is a season to build rich treasures of sight and taste and images that will keep us warm and entertained during the winter months.

If you teach your children how to behave properly, they might not have to face the consequences of having someone else teach them the hard way.

There is a time and a season for everything, and if fools cannot manage to figure out that there is a time for living and a time for loving, then ... why ... people will have to seek out that time of light and happiness when they can.

Hoke the Horrible is hard at work, and Margot the Troll nearly trips over someone who is going to change her life.

Katrina Stonoff, intrigued by Hollywood's version of the story, turns to the novel "The Prestige" by Christopher Priest to try to find out what really happened ...

People will judge you based on what you look like, but they can be very wrong. The truth is found when your actions do the talking.

Who eats this stuff, anyway?

She was an expert on office efficiency, but she had one thing more going for her: she was psychic.

Odysseus longed for his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus with every bit of his strength. Yet in Tennyson's "Ulysses," the same character spurns the very things he treasured. How can this be?

At family get-togethers, why do relatives pick and snipe when what they really need is to make great harmony together?

Lucy Jade has a gift that is also a curse ... maybe because everyone wants to think it's a curse and no one wants to train her talent into a gift. Jack knows how a kid has to travel that road and wants to change the direction for someone else. There's got to be a way to make a difference, but finding the way is like flying too close to the sun.

Is it just societal molds and preconceived attitudes that make men and women seem so different? Are we all just pawns of the system?

Michael McLaughlin continues to unveil the secrets of a successful retirement in Lake Chapala, Mexico.

The Agency wants to investigate Lucy Jade, because everyone knows that it's just not right for a young girl to see ghosts. And her parents want Lucy investigated too, because they know that seeing ghosts is not normal. "Cure her," they say, "and stop her from writing those awful stories." Can they be both wrong and right?

Win every bet? Make money hand over fist? Sounds good to some of the Jennan Clan, and they don't want to give up the opportunity, even to the point of war ...

Sand and Bernie zoom to the theater to see The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and eat tons of popcorn -- and clap at the end.

Getting off the highway and onto to streets isn't always enough. Sometimes, if you want to do something special, you have to be in the right place at the right time.

When an alliance of clashing colors becomes a game of chance, and a betrothal turns out to be a bad deal, you can be sure that no one -- no one -- is going to be a winner.

If you're hot and thirsty, the best thing in the world is a glass of ice water. If you're stranded in the snow, you'd just as soon be having your eyebrows scorched off at the seat next to the fireplace.

Fat, dumb and happy? Aser and Danner get it their way, right away, and it ain't over 'til the dwarf in the coconut bra dances the hula...

Sand and Bernie return to their favorite movie theater, settle into rocking stadium seats with lots of popcorn to see Pirates 3 -- and end up avoiding looking at excessive crabs.