A roadside assistance technician stops to help a couple with their car, only to be roped into a strange affair. As a public school superintendent, you must build and get funding to achieve the status of greatest public school district in the world. A character finishes creating the first time travel machine, only to discover it can only move in two-minute increments.

Two incompatible people are sent on a blind date together and decide to get revenge on their friends. The thing that is most striking about this story, aside from its restrained, grave beauty, is that it should manage to be so moving. On one level it is a dryly detailed and topographically exact portrait of a small town in the American midwest, but on another it is a devastating threnody for lost love. Gass was one of the great prose stylists, and the writing here is typically smooth and pellucid, conjuring its effects by stealth and unflagging control. Simply, and by simple means, a masterpiece. John Banville “American Express” by James Salter (1988) Although Belly and Cam date throughout the summer, romantic tension between Belly and Conrad grows. At a house party, Conrad becomes aggressive with a young man in his twenties. To prevent them from coming to blows, Belly steps between them to break up the argument. Later, as she sits alone with Conrad in a car, he gently strokes her hair. He is on the verge of saying something to her, but the moment passes.Two ballerinas carpool to their next lesson together and uncover some surprising information on the way. An acting coach attempts to create the greatest theater company around, looking to both the actors and the audience. A witch struggling to make ends meet starts to read tarot cards and sell crystals as a side hustle. A series about the experiences of an acid trip, and the ways it shapes people's lives before and after. If you love JG Ballard, you should read Anna Kavan. Few novelists, Ballard said, “could match the intensity of her vision”, and that same intensity fuels her stories. The narrator of “A Bright Green Field” claims to encounter the same, unnaturally vivid field of grass wherever she goes. It’s an unlikely candidate for a bete noire, but Kavan’s descriptions of a mountain town in the gathering gloom, loomed over by “the sheer emerald wall that was the meadow”, create an atmosphere of powerful unease. “Extra” by Yiyun Li (2003)

An old woman tries her hand at cooking for a man again for her first first date in over fifty years. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ A character discovers they have the ability to visit the past and future, but at the risk that they'll lose something valuable.Machado takes a grisly campfire tale (“The Green Ribbon”), combines it with the purported medical practice of suturing a woman’s perineum with an extra stitch or two after childbirth to increase her husband’s pleasure, and creates a powerful modern fable about misogyny and motherhood. Before her wedding day, as Machado expertly builds the atmosphere of foreboding, the narrator notes that, “Brides never fare well in stories. Stories can sense happiness and snuff it out like a candle”. “Madame Tellier’s House” by Guy de Maupassant (1881)

A kid attemps to ignore distractions during church after being promised an ice cream sandwich for good behavior. If she had been physically able Diane said she would have taken her own life. That’s not illegal. But because of the terrible nature of her illness she could not do this – to carry out her wishes she would have needed assistance. Diane died in a hospice in May 2002, having fought in the High Court and the European Court of Human Rights. Her widower, Brian, has never stopped campaigning for justice for Diane. Nobody has done more to promote the need for reform of our law. Do you have a story to tell?After a series of grizzly murders on full moon nights, a small medieval village must figure out which among them is a werewolf.