The Strange Recital

"By the time the next tsunami hit, at dawn, Father Flanagan's main concern was for the nuns.  Their children's mission, on another island miles away, was at risk."   A moral dilemma on which hangs the fate of humanity... what would you do?

"I was sitting on the ground, straight up against something rigid, my head was hanging, my chin on my chest. I smelled smoke and heard the snap and hiss of a fire." A woman wakes up, struggling to remember... was she once free? How do you face a future in captivity? A novel set in the past but timely for the present.

"Often in the pink light of dawn I would take long walks up Woodland Valley Road or strike off up the mountainsides into untracked forest...."   A man hiding from a killer unexpectedly encounters his past — and his future as well. Are there socialist ghosts in these woods? Is synchronicity real?

"It took much convincing to get Zeitzer to don his hiking boots, dig out his metal detector, and accept the premise that there was a treasure trove stowed somewhere in the woods based on the word of a spook."   Two guys with unlikely names, Coot and Z, hike up a mountain. They encounter travails both physical and mental. Why ask why?

"John Eldritch woke up in the middle of the night to find himself pinned down in his bed, a knee on his chest and his arms grasped firmly below the elbows. 'Just tell us where it is and you won't get hurt.'"   A secret plan... an invisible city... a cryptic journal. Is it possible in today's world to be a great explorer of unknown frontiers?

"'Do you ever think about old Jonny Swiggert?' Bobby asked me. We were standing under the awning of Sam's All-Night Coffee and Donuts, sipping hot coffee from polystyrene cups. Light rain was falling and the autumn air had a winter chill...."   London cabbies must know the city, but maybe the old ones know something more. When a dark mystery pulls you like a magnet, do you follow?

"The 1 mg. tablet of clonazepam needs thirty minutes to kick in so I take that first. Then I put on a polyester shirt and my tan leisure suit, and load up the VCR."   A new twist on time travel, but also an investigation of self. Can perseverance overcome fate? What would you do to save a life?

"Energy was all ours and we burned it. We'd run down the beach, us girls, until the jagged water-edge turned us back. We'd hop stairs to the roof and scream until a flashlight halted us."   Two vignettes from a woman's life. Welding torch, highway, tattoos, dusty junk... Can we make judgments? What have we learned?

"It hadn't rained yet, so Ket looked out at the grey morning and limped out to join the rest. He had to lean on the old stub of a spear he'd carried since the hunt that had made his reputation."   Life is more than the struggle to survive. What might have been the origins of art in our prehistoric ancestors?

"The truth is, things were not working out well. Cate and I had been fighting a lot lately, and at the root of it was the clich e I hated to admit: money."   A man looks back to the dawn of his marriage. Was their union doomed by esoteric mysteries? Perhaps he needs to see through her eyes.

"She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter."   A strange little vignette by the lauded (or is that laudanum?) master of romantic gloom. And an attempt to interview the author. What were we thinking?

"Simon Bearde, a steward on the SS Pandora, made a discovery just as his vessel had passed over the equator into the Southern Hemisphere."   Young men at sea with their rituals and rackets, a line crossed, a deep thought, a big wave... and are bacteria and ocean liners actually alike?

"It was early fall, 2001, and I was at the Rosebud Indian reservation to teach a class in Non-Violent Civil Disobedience."   Tobacco offerings, a sweat lodge... a young man not only meets a different culture, but experiences something beyond explanation. Can you ask for what you need? What dark future approaches?

"One sunny afternoon under clear skies the life of one Uretherer V. Lamb, 63, pataphysician, of Interlachen, Florida, was changed for all time."   The Grim Reaper visits Florida wearing a silly tie. One man's life is done...or is it? What happens if you subvert the cosmic order?

"'It was the girl.' The old man leaned forward, bracing against the worn-out armchair as though  he were trying to escape its grasp. 'April Cooper. She was the real killer.'"   A podcast about a podcast about a long-ago murder spree. Crime ripples across generations. Can a broken family be mended? Can we ever really know someone?

"I went to the back window to start scouting for the Uberwolves...."   Predators, floods, grid collapse. A survival story, a prescient vision of the future, or a metaphor for the end of a marriage? There's always Bach...

"My name is Lester Spanda now, but once I was known as Jack Dunne… Mad Dog Dunne, soldier of fortune!"   Can a mercenary killer find a spiritual path? Is redemption possible? Or... maybe it's all just a grandiose lie.

"Meno had been turning his mind over with a spade for weeks. Nothing. He was done. He was ready to retreat into the soft bosom of admitted failure...."   What is the power of this thing called "chance"? Can it create anything truly new? After all, meaning always changes with your angle of view.

"George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died. From the rented hospital bed, placed in the middle of his own living room, he saw insects running in and out of imaginary cracks in the ceiling plaster."   A Pulitzer-winning novel about generations of New England men begins with a death, then spirals backward in time. Fathers, sons, lives lived, the richness of language.

"'Do you have five minutes?' The best thing was not to answer. 'Why?' 'If you give me five minutes, I'll tell you my life.'"   A stranger stops you on the street. Do you listen? Maybe one childhood is like another. But whose story is being told here, anyway?

"The room had been ransacked, the dressing screen knocked over, Marni's wigs tossed askew. Her collection of carefully ironed cocktail dresses had been torn from the pasteboard wardrobe. The yellowed lingerie of a bygone era was cruelly scattered across the floor."   A faded B-movie star goes missing... but is that really the story here? Who's in charge, the programmer or the software?

"'I want to see my grave. To make sure you've dug it properly.' Otis spoke those words the day before he died."   A cave, a tiny garden, a vast empty landscape. Left alone in a ruined world, what will a young man do?

"Two men. Orson Welles and Marlon Brando. They veered off road somewhere in the Sonoran desert. South of the border. They crashed into a saguaro cactus. The top swayed and dropped like an alien green chandelier. The rooftop buckled. The windshield cracked. Orson's silver hair was askew as he stumbled out of the baby blue Coupe DeVille. He shouted out into the desert plain. 'Kiki!'"   It begins at...

"The air hung heavy on a cold morning or night in mid-July, depending on whether or not you were able to sleep. Most people had stopped a few years back, instead choosing to watch the news channel, which ran twenty-four hours a day."   Journalism goes underground... can it survive? This smart dystopian tale by a high school student suggests a future that might be all too near.

"Lisa looked in the rearview mirror and saw that her eyes had turned black."   Driving cross-country on a relentless chase... what do you do if your body begins to transform into something unknown?