2018 Authors

We are on a craggy bluff—two wind-blown women admiring the way the ocean boils and seethes on the rocks far below—when I take a quick step back to give Edna a shove over the precipice.

Sometimes I lurk in evening shadows across from her hairdressing salon. After she comes out and turns the key in the lock, I follow her into the thickening mist of the alley, take out the long-handled knife from beneath my coat, and—

At other times, she is Anna Karenina and I am the train. But wait. That one doesn’t count as […]

A Needle Pulling Thread

by J.R. Johnson

Luani scanned the new Symphony Hall with an appreciative eye. After five years of refurbishment, untold cost overruns, and the inevitable discussion of whether art was worth it (in such perilous times), the building was finally complete.

Golden Quebec beech panelling angled through the hall to maximize acoustic reflection; high balcony walls curved like the sides of a ship; and the organ’s massive pipes glittered at the bow of the room. The organist perched in a crow’s nest halfway up to the soaring ceiling, a thin metal rail all that stood between her and empty […]

Thoughtful Murders

A Needle Pulling Thread