Read the beginning of "Sleep" from Sleep in Me byJon Pineda:

"A week later I would start seventh grade at Great Bridge Junior High. The building had actually been the high school building from the year before. The new one was down the road on Hanbury, the one Rica would have graduated from. As I walked the hallways of my new school, I couldn’t help but wonder which of these lockers had belonged to my sisters. I would have given anything to know. In which shadowy corner had each of them kissed their boyfriends, whispered plans to skip, or just meet up with friends after school.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: Sleep in Me by Jon Pineda”

Read the beginning of the title story, "Bliss" from Bliss and Other Short Stories by Ted Gilley:

"All my life, I seem to have been mistaken for someone else. The other day, a woman stopped me in the produce aisle at the market and said, “Michael?” When I pick up heart pills for my dad, the pharmacist always says, “Hi, Tim.” When I correct him, he smiles and says, “Good to see you.” When I walk down Idle Road from my apartment to my job, or along the highway, people I don’t know wave at me from cars. I wave back, it can’t hurt. One day a girl leaned out of a car as it shot by and yelled, “I love you, Jamie!” I am introduced to people over and over again. “Have we met?” they say. “It’s Walter, or Phil, or Daniel, isn’t it?” I have wondered if wearing a name tag would be a bad idea. Hello, I’m Cleave. Who could forget such a name? When I look in the mirror I realize that I am, to some extent, a fabrication. The face looks like mine, all right, but also looks, vaguely, like anyone’s: a racial cameo of smooth skin, fine hair. Mouth, nose, and eyes all where they should be, but somehow indistinct—the anonymous, undeclared face of a baby. A face you could put a face onto, including your own, or that of someone close to you whom you’ve not seen in you can’t remember how long. “Michael?” When the lady in the store said that, I just smiled and shook my head—and she looked confused, hurt, angry. Who had she lost? Yes, I wanted to say, but didn’t. Yes, it’s me.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: Bliss and Other Short Stories by Ted Gilley”

Read the beginning of the first chapter from Stolen Horses by Dan O'Brien:

"Since Erwin Benson was a young man he has been an early riser. Belief that the darkness would cease and that the sun was on its way made him hopeful and was as close to religion as he ever managed. From time to time he wished he could believe in more. He always knew that such a leap would have made life easier, but he could never take that leap and had to settle for the predawn. His early morning ritual has served him well enough. He was eighty-five years old and still working. Already this morning he made his way in the dark from his house on Calvert Street to his office in the Lakota County courthouse. He moved through the inky air like a blind man in his own home, navigated by the scent of waning lilac and columbine. By feel he found the office key on a ring of many. Without switching on the light, he puttered with the coffeepot and wandered the three rooms of the county prosecutor’s office waiting for it to perk. He glanced out the window and was pleased to find the darkness still exhilarating. There was still the sense of risk. There was a chance that today was the day the sun would not rise. Rising early was an act of faith.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: Stolen Horses by Dan O’Brien”

New in paperback, read from the Introduction to Corkscrewed: Adventures in the New French Wine Country by Robert V. Camuto:

"It was a perfect day to lose faith in wine. By midmorning on June 21, 2005, the heat and humidity were conspiring to make it another in a series of stifling hot days in Bordeaux. I’d set out from Saint-Émilion in my tiny Citroën rental car—windows rolled down to make up for the lack of air conditioning—en route to Vinexpo, the world’s largest wine convention held once every two years in the sprawling convention site north of the city.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: Corkscrewed by Robert V. Camuto”