1602 1 1
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Her mother sighed, fingering the faux-pearls around her neck. Barbara's neck tensed, almost as though the hair on the back of it would stand up: Here comes a platitude . . .
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16021811
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hoping for a happy outcome/
like a kindly voice on the line
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160293
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During what's called "Children's time," one day at church Sarah slides her left foot halfway out of her tiny ballet slipper to show Davie her toenails are painted the same soft pink as the inside of her shoe. "Look," she says. "My…
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1602148
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She parks the car and trudges insidefor her daily visithoping that the new rouge hidesthe old tears.Five years now she has been comingto see himHe looks nothing like the pictures toanyone but her.They say she should go homeand rest, relaxShe doesn't know how…
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160200
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Back in the Dark Ages, the Mongols invented the first hamburger pattie. They put slabs of beef under their horses' saddles and after a few miles of rough riding -- voila! a flattened piece of cow meat. They then proceeded t
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1602155
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I thought, what are we talking about? Botox?
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160243
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“Buy Shoes On Wednesday and Tweet at 4:00” is a new advice book which tells the reader the best possible time to get everything done, from flossing ones teeth to visiting Zanzibar. As a public service, I've used the information provided in that book to create an…
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160280
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I remember the man well, though he didn't notice me.Even though a million tiny things happened to cause his hand to brush me away from his neck, he didn't notice. Much like the way his eyes bounced off women's bodies as he hurried down the sidewalk in his blue wool…
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160287
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the steady, persistent work of beauty
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1602106
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Rarely is Quay Street so clean,
Monday in rain,
Neactain’s ticking over with
Slow jazz and crosswords,
Stout and steaming anoraks.
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160165
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You may think you've tasted envy, but yours was just a sour sip of wine at a civilized wine-tasting. Mine is bottom-shelf, well-brand gin in a biker bar with miss-the-urinal piss stains on the floor.
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160154
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160131
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Her dress swirled around her as she stepped into the ballroom, looking every bit as sultry as her recent Playboy cover...
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160163
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Ellen decided to soft-pedal the one month to live thing. Really, there was barely time for the patient to read Ellen's brochure.
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16011312
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Grey would rather be in the trees or down by the river. When a wind comes up, he grabs the wooly blanket from the hook in the barn and calls Phoebe. They stretch the blanket out between them and sail into the grassy meadow that slopes down the hill from t
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160165
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There’s a hole in my sock, just large enough that my big toe keeps slipping out.
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1601126
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I looked around in my pantry but there were no sentences I felt like cooking.
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160182
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Once, when he had been married for a year, she sent him a card which said, "If you have seen a cat smoke a pipe, you have got it made." There was an illustration of a big, black panther, standing up on its hind legs, smoking what looked like a big tub of
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160144
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death spoke in a swimming pool in late june:
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16011811
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It could be fun,/
with the guns, explosives, Molotov/
Cocktails and all,
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160162
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This wasn't going to be about her anymore.She tied her strong purple balloon to the neck of the wounded horse. Her skirt and her top felt like armor's breath. The tingle across her scalp felt warm. Small rug scrapes that made her think of her last dog, before she died.This…
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160152
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He is sitting in his bedroom trying to decide what to wear. He has an appointment at five. If he wants to make it he has to either catch the bus, which comes in about fifteen minutes, or drive in. If he wants to drive in he needs to put petrol in his car,
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160100
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We all ran out of the house into the communal garden without fences. There stood Von Rotten with a smoking rifle in his hands, and our mascot Digger lying on his side, limp. We all looked at each other in disbelief.
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160176
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Uh oh, the dry cleaning ticket
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160031
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The world—the natural world—was terrible and beautiful in wartime. The leaves shuddered off trees. The pockmarked fields. The fallen brick chimneys. The way the birds heaved together in enormous flocks like rescue missions and then just as…
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160099
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Requires one of those leaps.
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160051
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I can't find my way back to the library. I've heard of this happening, that if you leave even for just one day and for a very good reason, as good a reason as mine, you may not find your way back. Now why should this be so? I do not understand this library. It houses…
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160086
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Your faded presence in sepia dream returns, firelight whispers and vanilla scented ash. We were a beautiful knot: sinew and hemp, burlap and magnolia petal, concrete and vapor. Gray kisses hovered overhead, misty…
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160041
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Hers or mine?
You figure it out, jackass.
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160000
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Not long ago, Owen the Second showed her a skull. He kept it in a brown cardboard box in the top of the closet. "My first wife," he said, and sneered, his lip bunching up around a scar just under his nose.
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