No one took any notice.
None of the merchants, moneylenders or friars strolling by in the twilight around San Francesco il Grande noticed the slovenly, ill-dressed man who hurried into the Franciscan church. It was the eve of a holiday, a market day, and the inhabitants of Milan were busy gathering provisions for the coming days of official mourning. Under such circumstances, it was only natural that the presence of yet another beggar left them unconcerned. Read more
“I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell you he’s the one. Or at least as close as we’re going to get.”
“That’s what you said about the brother.” Read more
“Run along, make your calls, and enjoy His Lordship’s hooley,” said Mrs. Maureen Kincaid, “Kinky” to her friends, as she knelt in the hall and sponged Ribena black-current cordial from a small boy’s tweed overcoat. “I’ll expect you all back by five, sir, not a minute later. I’d not want the Christmas dinner to be spoiled.” Read more
They were supposed to stay at the beach a week, but neither of them had the heart for it and they decided to come back early. Macon drove. Sarah sat next to him, leaning against the side window. Chips of cloudy sky showed through her tangled brown curls. Read more
The patrol officers had left the front door open. They thought they were doing her a favor, airing the place out. But that was a violation of crime scene protocol regarding evidence containment. Bugs could go in and out. Touch DNA could be disturbed by a breeze through the house. Odors were particulate. Airing out a crime scene meant losing part of that crime scene. Read more
Jack Reacher caught the last of the summer sun in a small town on the coast of Maine, and then, like the birds in the sky above him, he began his long migration south. But not, he thought, straight down the coast. Not like the orioles and the buntings and the phoebes and the warblers and the ruby-throated hummingbirds. Instead he decided on a diagonal route, south and west, from the top right-hand corner of the country to the bottom left, maybe through Syracuse, and Cincinnati, and St. Louis, and Oklahoma City, and Albuquerque, and onward all the way to San Diego. Which for an army guy like Reacher was a little too full of Navy people, but which was otherwise a fine spot to start the winter. Read more
The journey was no worse than she expected. A train from London to Liverpool; the steam packet overnight to Dublin; a slow Sunday train west to a town called Athlone. Read more
The body lay on a small square of carpet in the middle of the gun-room floor. Alec Chipstead looked around for something to put over it. He unhooked a raincoat from one of the pegs and, covering the body, reflected too late that he would never wear that again. Read more
“It would be easy to kill you while you sleep.”
He rolls onto his side and faces his wife, tangling his fingers in her hair. Her face is shrouded in a dried blue mask; an antiaging beauty product that has begun to peel. The moonlight peeking through the bedroom curtains makes her look already dead. Read more
Rain.
It fell steadily on the city of Hypprux, a promise of the coming spring, but a cold, grudging one to be sure. The men who were repairing the roof of the cathedral had given up shortly after noon, and the shopkeepers had admitted defeat only a little while later, packing up their wares with numbed fingers, trudging into their homes soaked and shivering. Read more
After it’s over, of course, you want to kick yourself for all the things you didn’t see at the time. The Had-I-But-Known school of private investigation perhaps. My name is Kinsey Millhone and most of my reports begin the same way. I start by asserting who I am and what I do, as though by stating the same few basic facts I can make sense out of everything that comes afterward. Read more
As a child Trudi Montag thought everyone knew what went on inside others. That was before she understood the power of being different. The agony of being different. And the sin of ranting against an ineffective God. But before that—for years and years before that—she prayed to grow. Read more
The rain was heavy now and the hem of her dress was splattered with mud. She’d have to hide it afterwards; no one could know that she’d been out. Read more
Once upon a time, before the whole world changed, it was possible to run away from home, disguise who you were, and fit into polite society. Read more
“I remember my own childhood vividly … I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn’t let adults know I knew. It would scare them.”
MAURICE SENDAK, IN CONVERSATION WITH ART SPEIGELMAN,
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 27, 1993 Read more
